


Singing Harmonies in Neverland's Embrace

by zanni_scaramouche



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alpha Liam Payne, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Angst, Beta Niall Horan, Bodyguard Liam Payne, Destructive Behaviour, Enabling, Exes Louis/Zayn, Hospitals, Hypersexuality, M/M, Omega Harry Styles, Popstar Harry Styles, Snapshots, Tour, Tour Bus, incase that wasn’t obvious yet, manipulative management, really just a drawn out way to hate on chamomile, sex as a coping mechanism, welcomes to the underbelly of fame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28473009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanni_scaramouche/pseuds/zanni_scaramouche
Summary: Two minutes and seventeen seconds.That’s all it took. Liam wasn’t there, he’s only read the reports. He doesn’t know if Harry’s heart sounded the same as it does now, rapid and high strung. If Harry had frozen at the scent of Zayn’s blood. If Harry had screamed, or gasped, or cried. Liam wasn’t there, and he’s determined to make sure he never finds out what Harry does when one of his bodyguards takes a knife to the chest.
Relationships: Liam Payne/Harry Styles, Niall Horan/Harry Styles
Comments: 22
Kudos: 42
Collections: OmegaHarryFicFest





	Singing Harmonies in Neverland's Embrace

**Author's Note:**

> Written for OHFF 2020 Prompt #21  
> Make sure to check out the rest of the amazing fics in this collection!! 💕
> 
> My undying love to [M](http://mercurial-madhouse.tumblr.com/) for molding this fic and it's characters into some semblance of sense. You have her to thank for the 5k of actual good stuff in here. 
> 
> This… is much angstier than I thought it would be. At first glance of the prompt I thought: lil minx Harry and beefy Liam with a dash of UST that gets resolved with a BANG. Somehow that turned into this. I am so sorry. There’s not even a bang. It’s a whimper. 
> 
> I’ve had a lot of feelings about what the boys were put through at such a young age and how it must have affected them, which I explore particularly with Harry and his (fictional) toxic relationship with sex.
> 
> Also! this is the closest I've ever run up to a deadline. Seriously I finished this thing so late it was early the night before it posted. I had much grander plans for it to make things more nuanced, but I just didn't give myself enough time to give it the love it needed. Lesson learned!

_“Fuck, yeah baby.”_

Liam squints against the white fluorescent flicker. A dull pain has steadily grown over the last hour between his temples. The insistent litany of cursing seeping through the door at his back and the shitty arena corridor lighting of Enterprise Centre has only perpetuated it. 

_“Barnes for Payne.”_ The crackle of his radio comes to life in his right ear. 

“Go for Payne,” Liam returns. 

_“Apron all-clear.”_

“Copy.” 

A mental tick gets added on the list of secured locations for this hour's rounds. One box remains unchecked. A glance at his watch confirms what he already knows: it’s five past the hour. 

_“Ah, fuck, oh fuck.”_

Liam clicks his mic. “Payne for Larson.” 

A second’s pause. _“Go for Larson.”_

_“Shit baby, feel so good.”_

“Back of house check-in for eighteen-hundred.” Liam’s voice is even, tempered. Flat. 

_“BOH all-clear.”_

A loud groan resonates through the door at Liam’s back in duet with a high pitched whine, the vibration of the higher agitating the pulsing in his temples.

Liam clicks his mic. “Copy. Prepare for take off.” 

Muffled shuffling replaces the eager exclamations he’s been bathed in for the past half hour. A roadie walks past with their lanyard flipping around their chest and their footsteps echo along the concrete walls. Giggling and the sucking sounds of sloppy kissing take up behind the door. 

The fluorescent tube flickers overhead. Liam looks at his watch. Steps to the side. 

In a burst of laughter the door flings open.

“Best seafood carbonara in L.A., Styles, I’m telling you,” the long-limbed man insists while still adjusting the shirt he’s tucking into wrinkled trousers. 

“I believe it, mate.” 

Liam’s nose flinches at the abhorrent wave of sex wafting from the open door where his charge leans, lazy smile and loose limbs held up by the doorframe. More words are exchanged unworthy of noting. The pop star's eyes are glassy, red rimmed, unfocused. Liam catches a whiff of the alcohol that wets his lips, can count the number of open bottles in the room behind him by scent alone. His voice is raspy, absolutely fucked for the high note in his second ballad he’ll struggle through performing tonight.

It’s not Liam’s problem.

Harry Styles, pop-star extraordinaire, is safe from external harm. That’s what Liam’s here for, and it’s this task he’s quickly excelled at. He knows the blood-type of the man now done with pleasantries and sauntering down the hall reeking of sex and self-satisfaction, he knows the exact number of crew members allowed back stage, their names, their faces, their scents. 

He knows who rides on what bus and what areas of a venue their jobs require them to be in. He knows where they _shouldn’t_ be. He knows every entrance point in this, the past four, and the next five venues. He knows the number of local staff, he knows the blueprints, he knows the blindspots.

When Harry gathers himself—a heavy hand ruffled through the curls skimming his shoulders and no intent to use the top seven buttons of his shirt—Liam steps aside for him to pass. Several times he corrects Harry’s path through the maze of the venue’s underbelly until he stops. He doesn’t need to know the layout to know the double doors in front of them are the final barrier between the stage. The roar of St. Louis resonates through them. 

“Payne for Devine.” 

_“Go for Devine.”_

The response is choppy with static due to interference from the radio’s rendition of the screaming fans. 

“Final stage check.” 

A moment. The pop star bounces on his heels, blinking hard no doubt in an attempt to earn a sense of focus, shaking out his limbs and hands. 

Click. 

_“Stage all-clear.”_

The noise of the crowd swells the nano-second Harry swings through the doors and lands centre stage. He greets the world with a dimpled smile, his youthful exuberance shining under the relentless glare of a thousand lights. 

Liam knows there are no threats in the building. He knows it doesn’t particularly mean Harry is anything close to safe.

“Copy. Angel flying.” 

Harry’s eyes flick to the left before refocusing on the person in front of him. 

“It’s been great, I love being on the road.” 

“You look so good up there, man.” The groupie leans closer on the sofa to nudge Harry’s bicep, using the move as an excuse to enter the superstar’s personal space and not leave it. 

Liam’s arms tighten over his chest. 

“That’s good, would hate to hear otherwise.” Harry laughs with honest humour. 

The other man doesn’t catch onto the joke and chuckles too loud to compensate. 

Harry’s eyes flick to the side. 

“Little weird without Zayn though, isn’t it?” The guy leans closer, familiar. 

Harry’s still looking away. His hair has fallen just enough so Liam can’t see whatever expression it holds. Given the instant freeze of Harry’s body, he doesn’t need to. 

Two minutes and seventeen seconds. That’s all it took. Liam wasn’t there, he’s only read the reports. He doesn’t know if Harry’s heart sounded the same as it does now, rapid and high strung. If Harry had frozen at the scent of Zayn’s blood. If Harry had screamed, or gasped, or cried. Liam wasn’t there, and he’s determined to make sure he never finds out what Harry does when one of his bodyguards takes a knife to the chest. 

Liam’s molars grind in an effort not to drag the man out by the hair. His weight shifts to take the first step forward when Harry unlocks. The stutter in the way Harry forcefully lowers his shoulders is an imitation of his prior relaxation. 

Harry gives a hum. “Mm. Hey, you’ve got somewhere to be, yeah?” 

Liam’s fists curl with the desire to catch the familiar words and strangle them out of existence.

“Yeah,” Liam answers, curt. 

He steps out of the greenroom without a glance at the celebratory smile on the groupie’s face. Like he’s won the damn Lotto. It’s not Liam’s place to remind Harry he’s not some prize awarded to the next person in line, that’s for management and therapists. Liam’s place is outside the door, grimacing against another headache as the sounds of sex drip from the room. 

By the time they make it to the stage they’re thirty-four minutes overdue, the crowd restless. Their annoyance is forgotten the moment Harry steps on the stage in a flash of light. He charms all of Cleveland instantly with a wide smile, sings them a song, then another, rolls his body against the guitarist and thrusts his crotch as he dances with youthful vigor, tongue out and lewd. Obscene. 

He’s just a child. 

First single at sixteen. Five back to back albums overlapping with world tours later and here he is, twenty years young and stripping for a crowd like he was born for it, the curve of his hips still holding the softness of youth. 

Liam would turn his back if he were allowed, the itch under his skin telling him he shouldn’t be witness to the indecency despite the thousands of audience members eating up every bare inch of skin. Liam can’t turn his back. He’s here to do a job. Zayn Malik had been Harry’s personal bodyguard for the full four years the boy had been famous. As the reigning Alpha on the security docket, he’d accompanied Harry everywhere. 

A week before tour started Liam was woken in the middle of the night to take over, Harry’s management insistent on having an Alpha take point and Liam’s professional connections referring him quickly. 

Between maintaining a fitness routine in venue parking lots and calculating the specifics of his meals frozen in the small ice chest on the bus, ten days of the tour have gone by. Despite the megre six years between him and his charge, it was quickly clear why they purposefully overlooked Liam’s lack of experience and called him in over a senior beta. Only the inherent authority nature’s given him is the leading reason half the Alphas he pulled off of the green-eyed omega back down. 

_‘Watch him,’_ they’d told Liam at the beginning of the job. Liam’s still figuring out what, exactly, that means. 

His eyes blur out the wild figure of Harry thrusting and gyrating on stage, his focus kept firmly on his feet and those of anyone who enters his orbit. Because that is his job. 

“Harry!” Some two-hundred girls shriek in glaring discord.

Repetitive exposure has done nothing to make Liam less on edge during signings. Specifically the impromptu ones like this, at the gate behind the bus. It’s Liam against the crush of people gone senseless until backup arrives to keep things orderly. Harry’s talking to all of them, listening to each of their stories with wide earnest eyes. He looks startlingly genuine, an impressive feat to pull off considering the usual daze perpetually lingering behind his lids. 

Liam fists the back of someone’s neck as they try to rush forward, shoving them aside quickly so he can catch the next offender before they make contact. A low growl starts up in his chest. The crowd is slowly moving to encircle them from every side. For his part Harry stays attentive to the person immediately in front of him, barely a flinch when a pen is thrusted towards him by a sobbing fan.

The buzzing swarm increases in volume as they jostle against each other. Shrieks break out like piercing needles. Liam breathes through his mouth to keep the suffocating scent of _want_ rolling from the crowd out of his lungs. 

His commands come harsher as he fights for every inch of control. They’re teetering on the brink of civility and chaos, Harry smack dab in the eye of the storm, unaware of the potential mayhem the next breath could bring. 

The severe black uniforms of two security team members break through the venue door before the bubble pops. With grace they relieve Liam from the duty of holding back the line and he takes his place at Harry’s back. Harry’s shoulders are loose and relaxed, hunched to get close enough to hear the girl sobbing as she works through a story. 

With the way Harry’s looking, there might be better chances of him remembering the names of these fans than those of the lips he kisses. The moment he shares with them certainly holds more intimacy than Liam’s ever seen Harry give to his revolving door of suitors. 

The first step onto the bus Liam’s chest greedily expands, relief of the familiar stuffy air a welcome balm to his senses after the mayhem they’ve left behind. The latch of the closing door signals the end of another 24 hours of danger kept at bay. 

He follows Harry’s soft steps into the aisle. Liam finds a seat at the table, close to the window and facing towards the rear, the perfect place to catch Harry’s profile as he scans over the bus. 

The rosy flush from the crowd, the glint in his eye, the smile that danced on his lips, it’s all gone. Wiped completely. The features of Harry’s face hold no more expression than a porcelain doll as he paces slowly towards the bunks. 

“Good night out there?” Asks Patty, the overweight and amiable driver from the seat across from Liam, keeping his head down on a half-finished crossword.

Harry hums without trying to look at the man either, simply snags a discarded jumper from the back of a chair on his route to the back. 

“No company tonight?” 

“Nope.” Harry pops the ‘p’ and continues to the rear stairs.

Liam squints at the chair the jumper had been draped over, placed there when Harry had excitedly tossed it pre-show in a hurricane of motion and lightning smiles. 

“Maybe he’s gone celibate,” Ashton, the touring drummer, tosses out to the rest of the lounging band members as they settle on the bus with languid limbs from the show.

The backing vocalist with the punk haircut, the one Liam’s had to resist yanking the lip ring out of a few times by now whenever he’s clacking it against his teeth, pipes in. “Think he’s saving himself for a proper A?”

Patty snorts and starts folding his paper, breathing going irritably heavy as he works himself out of the narrow booth.

Harry hadn’t picked the jumper up, didn’t even get a proper hold of it. One of his fingers had hooked on a fold as he’d walked by, letting his steps drag the article from it’s slumped position a fraction at a time. It had been over in a second. Too small a thing for the way the memory of it has lodged on repeat like a skipping disk. 

Liam rolls back his shoulders to shake the picture loose. 

There’s an unsettling aftertaste to it, a niggling thought that the boy who flung the jumper onto the chair has nothing in common with the one who retrieved it. Inspecting each member of the band Liam finds them all the same, stars in their eyes as they chatter excitedly with energy. The comradery is due to burn out once they’ve been on the road long enough for hotel nights to look like home. Soft steps are heard overhead from the upper deck. 

No one else seems aware of the imposter they have on board. 

Liam shifts in his seat. Does a mental head count of the crew on board: a driver in the cab, three musicians in the front lounge, plus another upstairs, and Harry. Liam’s fingers tighten on his thighs. 

The band have fallen into taking turns having conversations with themselves out loud in a pantomime of socialising. Liam doesn’t pretend to participate. He cuts his ears off from the noise and watches the blur of the world through the window. Everyone is accounted for. 

With effort he pulls up the schematics of Boston’s TD Garden, a distraction over his mantra. 

Everyone is safe. 

The back of Liam’s neck prickles. 

The interviewer laughs with a wide-open lipsticked mouth that shows off coffee stained molars whitestrips won’t reach. Harry doesn’t flinch at the hand on his knee, so Liam does it for him.

“How about those rumours circling?” 

A twitch starts up in the corner of Liam’s right eye. His radio pops with random feedback, interference that’s steadily driving him mad every time they’re near the plethora of signals that come with a television crew. Harry rubs the edge of an eyebrow, his eyes flick to the left. The mask of a smile is pulled tight over his features. 

There were seven pages of contracts the host had to sign in order to hold this interview. A total of thirteen signatures, including one stating she wouldn’t impede Liam from doing his job should he find necessary cause to cut the interview short. 

Liam’s fists curl with the itch to strangle. 

“You and Camille Rowe,” the host simpers when it’s clear she won’t be getting what she wanted. 

Harry blinks slowly, a switch over into flirtation as he reclines with an arm casually tossed over the sofa and the length of his body on display, a sideways slant to his lips as though he’s mischievously thinking of something naughty. 

The chances of convincing Harry’s management her statement was enough to be considered an intentional reference are high enough to consider, possibly enough to get her fined and tied up in a career-ending lawsuit. 

A blink and Harry’s demeanor shifts once more into the rosy cheeked boy next door, eyes bright as he details how wonderful the woman he’s never met is, his gracious manners implying even the thought of holding her hand would be scandalous. Less than twelve hours ago he was grabbing his crotch in front of thousands while his shirt exposed more skin than it covered. Now his perfectly-styled curls frame his face. He is cherubic, the glowing angel they’ve nicked as his call sign. 

Liam had no part in that. Harry had wings before Liam ever came near him. 

It’s not the first time Harry Styles has been the embodiment of contradiction. 

Harry doesn’t use his phone. 

Despite all attempts, Liam remains human. Food and its disposal are necessary to his function, sleep at regular intervals also. He’s woken up more times than he can count to Devine’s worried face hovering outside his bunk. Liam can’t get mad at the man, he’s the only one on the security team willing to tell Liam when there’s an issue, a fact that’s quickly led to his rapid promotion as point during Liam’s off-shift hours. 

Without him, Liam would have remained asleep on their last night in New York instead of hunting down the pop star to a back room in the venue, sandwiched between roadies drinking their overworked and overtired worries away. 

“You’re not sleeping,” Harry accuses like he’s encountered a math problem he used to know but the answers dared to change on him. 

Liam grabs the fabric of Harry’s rumpled blouse and tugs just enough to pull him in the right direction, letting go the moment Harry’s feet start moving on their own. He keeps Harry in front of him so he can’t disappear from sight. 

“No.” 

“Why not?” Harry cranes over his shoulder, not quite getting a look at Liam because his steps go wayward and he has to look ahead again before tripping.

Liam nudges the small of his back to keep him moving forward. He doesn’t speak until they approach the parked bus.

“Where’s your phone?” 

Harry fumbles and pauses at the bottom of the bus steps until he slides the mobile out, it lights up at his touch to show a screen gone red with alert notifications. The mere sight sends a spike of anxiety shoots through Liam’s skull. 

“Why aren’t you using it?” 

“Gets me in trouble.” Harry answers without the coy nature he’s prone to using, more like it’s a truth inherently known.

There’s no denying it. Liam’s seen enough of the gossip, has to in order to do his job right. Every text Harry sends, every word he says, every interaction from a wink to a wave has the ripple effect of a monsoon. Things get leaked, things get faked, things get misinterpreted. The world drinks it up. 

And Harry had sat sweating on that spotlit studio sofa and smiled. 

“You’re in trouble right now.” 

“Am I?” Harry cocks an eyebrow. Despite the playful lilt of his lips, there’s a seriousness to Harry’s tone. Like he’s genuinely interested in the answer. 

The bus door opens before Liam knows how to respond. 

Messy blond and blue eyes greet them, silhouetted from the interior lights above. Harry reaches without looking, a hand tough from guitar calluses encircling his wrist with familiarity and tugging lightly to pull Harry in.

“Been looking for you, pet,” the haloed man speaks in a loud brogue to compete with the cheerful yelling of the band in the common area. 

Harry follows towards the stairs, hips swaying in the way he likes to saunter around on stage, like he’s gracing whoever witnesses his existence with the gift of himself. Liam shuts the bus door securely and watches the two of them trail towards the upstairs lounge where they’ll stay locked away from the rest of the company until the bus engine stops. The others like to speculate about what happens behind the closed door, although the lack of incriminating scents leaves it as nothing but talk. 

It’s all anyone seems to do when it comes to Harry. 

“Liam.” 

Harry’s stopped on the first step, one hand still hooked in the guitarist’s hold while he turns. Liam’s headed past on his way to return to his bunk and he stops short like Harry is nothing more than a detour. It’s fitting considering it’s all he is. A quick stop, a quick job, a quick glimpse at a life Liam doesn’t belong in. 

“Can’t have too many secrets in my pocket.” The slick cool glide of Harry’s mobile slips into Liam’s palm. “Hold onto them for me.” 

There’s no lock on it. A simple tap of the button shows every one of Harry’s social platforms logged in, hundreds of unread texts, and an inbox full of voicemail messages. It’s heavy. 

Liam turns the thing off and goes to sleep. 

Harry’s lips twitch when Liam hands the factory-reset mobile to him in the morning, his torso resting in the crease of the blond beta’s legs as they recline lengthways on the sofa. It could be a smile or a grimace Harry suppresses, there’s not enough time to tell. 

“Those could have been important.” 

“You would have opened them then,” Liam says as he pulls out one of his premade breakfasts from the fridge. 

The taste is the same he’s known for the past several years, his portioned meals no longer good or bad in flavour, just food. He tucks it under his arm and reaches for the door. There’s no rain today, he’ll be able to run further and harder than he has in a while, but he’ll cut it short before he pushes far enough to make his muscles sore. Nothing is worth interfering with his ability to do his job. 

Harry doesn’t shy away from the serious look directed his way.

“Answer when I call.” It’s not an order, but it could be if he’d wanted it so.

“Where are we?” 

“Between whereeverthefuck and whogivesafuck.” The backing vocalist scratches his scalp through a mile of bedhead.

The bassist grunts at the answer and wanders a few yards away to smoke up. Liam’s not concerned.

Harry is two metres away from Liam, curls tangled around his ears and fingers full of rings despite having been woken four minutes ago, which puts him over three hundred kilometres from the venue they left this morning and a hundred kilometres with change to where he needs to be in—Liam glances at his watch—three hours and twenty-one minutes for sound check. That, _he_ , is all Liam is concerned with. 

A click and plastic bang precedes three heavy footsteps on the bus stairs. Rubber soles scuff the asphalt as Niall Horan shuffles into view, past where Liam’s got his arms crossed surveying the men bent over a steaming engine, a straight trajectory to his destination. The moment Niall is within Harry’s orbit they adjust, shoulders angling, weight shifting, until finally contact is made as Niall’s bare palm collides with Harry’s in the way a planet collides with the rays of the sun. 

Liam’s eyes hook on their twined hands with an unrestrained urge to know if Harry can still hear Niall’s heartbeat. 

Seven—no, eight—minutes ago, Liam stood from his window seat and marched up the stairs towards the back lounge where only two occupants of the bus were permitted. He’d knocked twice and opened the door, half surprised it was unlocked for him to do so. Perhaps it was because of the unwritten rule, perhaps he should have known to wait, but he hadn’t. So he’d opened the door.

Liam forgets sometimes. Past Harry’s fame and his inclination for proclivity, there’s another inherent side of Harry. A side that must crave touch for the sake of touch and the soothing rhythms of routine. An omega side. 

Harry’s scent had enveloped Liam in a binding embrace. He took in the delicate slope of Harry’s spine, curved like it’d been pressed into shape by an invisible weight. It had led from crooked hips and rounded through the expanse of his back, topped by curled shoulders and a mess of hair that had lifted from Niall’s stomach to turn and reveal red-rimmed greens. In what little light had crept through the curtains, the sheets had been wrapped around their limbs like there’d been a war preceding this surrender. 

The brine of tears had been strong enough without the shine of Harry’s cheeks or the darkness of Niall’s soaked shirt to tell Liam of the ocean raging inside those storm filled eyes. 

Niall had a hand captured and pulled into Harry’s chest, the other stroking through chocolate strands, though it had dropped when Harry’d turned to see Liam in the doorway. 

“Bus broke down. Evacuate until it’s deemed safe.” 

It went unsaid that Liam would be the one to deem so. 

The silence had been so loud it’d made Liam notice the absence of what he hadn't cared to listen for on the other side of the door. There’d been a song, a melody, he’d followed there. It hadn’t been Harry, because he’d have known if it was, and it hadn’t been.

Niall’s muscles had remained loose, his breathing smooth as he’d gently guided Harry’s head back to his stomach while he spoke with an even tone. “Thank you, Liam.” 

His eyes. They hadn’t matched the dull apathy in his voice. They’d been sharp, and they’d pierced Liam straight through.

Now there’s a jumper pulled over the blond's shoulders, beneath it a pop of the shirt soaked with Harry’s tears, right where Niall’s hand absently settles over his naval while his other latches onto Harry’s fingers. It’s a ripple effect, that one little touch. It’s like he’s tethering Harry to the earth, a magnetic force grounding him to the core. 

Harry’s shoulders settle, his breathing eases, his eyes lose the nervous flit and become clear, wide, intelligent in a way Liam so rarely witnesses between the endorphin-drunk haze of shows and the blown intoxication of lust. With all their clarity they meet Liam’s stare, a crease forming between Harry’s brows. Liam’s been watching too long. 

He blinks. 

Three hours and nineteen minutes left until soundcheck. 

Patty grunts and swears over the hood of the bus with an ominous clunk of metal. 

The split second was enough of a distraction. Niall stands alone when Liam’s eyes return to him, a nod of his head towards the rear end of the bus when he notices the fierce glare. 

Liam rounds the back of the bus with more than stale exhaust clogging his lungs. 

“You don’t smoke.” 

Harry’s fingers dance along the length of the cylinder of bleached white tar, ashes precariously poised on the lit end. 

“Maybe I like the smell.” 

Liam plucks the cigarette from his fingers and stubs it on the double decker. He doesn’t look at its scattered soot when he tosses it on the ground, but Harry does. Liam’s instincts are surging violently, so thinly contained within his skin. Something about the glimpse of vulnerability he’d caught without permission has left him raging with a need to cut down every threat within reach with the force of captured lightning. There’s no release when the only substantial offender has been grinded into unrecognizable matter beneath his foot. 

Liam tries to bury it the longer the moment stretches on. Harry’s destructive habits are some other man’s misery to worry over.

Perhaps Liam’s reached his limit of watching Harry dig his own grave, perhaps it’s the simple hatred he’s always held for the scent of cigarettes. His head is too filled with smoke to see reason. 

Harry doesn’t tilt his head up. He lifts only his eyelids to look through long lashes with a smile Liam’s not prepared to see on the crumbling side of the road behind a broken tour bus, but maybe that’s exactly where he should have expected it. This. The signal Harry’s giving him by dragging a meaningful gaze over Liam’s skin and licks his berry stained lips so they soften in temptation. 

It’s an open invitation to sign his name on a list he wants to reduce to ash. 

“You want to be the one to fill my lungs? Burn in my hands and make me choke?” 

Whatever time has passed since Liam’s blinked, it was enough for Harry’s chameleon scales to shift colours into salacious scarlett. Liam narrows his eyes. Takes his time watching this distinct colour roll over the atoms of Harry’s being until he’s drenched and dripping in it. Liam’s seen it before, but never directed at himself, not like this. It’s a mask, a fancy flash of pigmentation meant to distract from the purple hues beneath his eyes. It’s not enough. 

Is this really all it takes? How blind must every person who’s stood before this look have been not see the way Harry’s drowning beneath it. 

“Don’t pick up habits you can’t break.” 

Harry shifts, but he doesn’t rescind the blatant offer. He holds solid even when he must know Liam’s seeing through it all. There’s heat where their bodies skim. A game of chicken Liam refuses to lose, more saddened than intimidated by the persistence. Harry’s nose grazes his cheek.

Liam’s body coils tight with the frisson of static electricity emanating from Harry. Doesn’t choke when he releases a mouthful of air filled with the remnants of smoke in Liam’s face. 

“What else could you expect of me?” 

The muscles in Liam’s throat tense like they’re prepared to give an answer to Harry’s waiting pause, but he’s at a loss for definite words. He doesn’t expect _anything_. 

He loathes the very thought of becoming one more strong hand manipulating Harry into foreign shapes. If only he could find a way to explain the acidic burn blistering his tongue from being perceived in such harsh error.

The words don’t come to him before Harry’s eyes fade dull. He brushes past Liam with a whisper of touch, . His feet grind rubble beneath their soles with every step he takes behind Liam’s back. 

Liam had a dream last night. He was standing alone on a shore as an earthquake hit. His bones had locked like marble cages beneath layers of meaty sinew while the world was thrown into chaos. Glacial water had lapped imminently close to his toes, not once caressing his skin no matter how violently the earth raged. 

He’d been on fire. 

Now his heart pounds with the flighty flicker of the flames, his hands at his side tremble in a mimic of the earth’s quiver. There is no ocean in sight to seek refuge in. 

His eyes press closed in a tight squeeze. When they open he’s stilled, a forceful awakening. 

On the bus, Niall has spread his arms along the back of the sofa in the front lounge with his chest wide open, the spot next to his navel still scented with the salty remnants of dried tears. It draws Liam’s eyes like a bullseye despite the cotton jumper still covering it. 

Liam takes the last step on board with eyes searching out the straight line of Harry’s shoulders and the back of his head. Harry’s saying something to the others seated around him at the table, or someone is saying something to him, and it causes the tilt of his head to shift and his fingers to tap along the thigh of his leg cocked out in the aisle.. 

The loud crack of Naill’s laughter breaks the focus. The door is closed and the wheels have started turning. Liam has no idea what time it is. 

For now, Harry is as safe as he’s going to get. Liam walks himself to the back row of bunks and slides into the padded slot carved out for him. 

It is, he thinks in the dark before he closes his eyes, not unlike a coffin.

Time pounds a steady beat through a layer of sticky amber molasses. 

Along boardwalks and carpets jeering paparazzi wear out a name until it becomes no more than the sound of desperate pleas for a paycheque. They surge at the spectacle of their own making from all directions with elbows and words ready to nail a soft spot in order to get the split second reaction they need. It’s a harsh tug of war of wills to stand stoic amongst it like a pane of glass barricading them from the zoo animal they’ve stalked, casting the caged boy in silhouette with the starburst of their bulbs. 

In cramped venues, crowds ten thousand deep shower a poet in an echo of his own words in search of peace of mind. They stand alone and sing along, trying to find connection in a mirror of whatever they want to see. Like a funhouse, every attempt to get closer removes them in measurements of decades from understanding the being bending under the sweltering weight of the stage lights. 

On the bus, a pale reflection flickers in the window, as elusive as Peter Pan’s shadow in the soft glow of the sun flaring through the blinds.

Beneath it all there’s Harry. And beside him, behind him, always close enough to reach in a breath’s time, is Liam. 

He’s been getting closer. Leaning into Harry’s heat, matching steps to his rhythm, and fuck, counting time by his _breaths_. Too close. 

Liam’s knuckles grow familiar with the wooden panel of the upper lounge door while he ignores the glimpses of something he can’t understand every time it opens. 

If Niall were an Alpha, his arm over Harry’s shoulders, his guiding nudges at the small of his back, the sharp eye he casts at those that step too close, it would all echo with possessiveness. Yet there’s no jealous spark when Niall flicks a finger into a lovebite someone else left on Harry’s skin, nothing but a brotherly sort of fondness in his eyes when Harry tucks closer than appropriate for any sort of brother. 

That edge in Niall’s eyes, the intent in his touch, it’s not the recognisable deep need to lay claim in preformative displays Liam’s used to seeing. There’s something tying them together, something behind those pale blues, and damned if Liam can decipher what. Scientists have spent millenia and gotten no closer to understanding the secrets of magnetic fields, yet the fierce drive to uncover the core of it drives Liam mad like the tender ache of a cavity every time he bites.

The pull of Harry wears on him. The soft spots of Liam’s fingertips itch so intensely he curls them into fists as his eyes cut through artificial fog and sweeping lights. Liam’s nose flares with an exaggerated push of his lungs to clear out the scents gone rampant in the dark. 

Harry’s head is tossed back, his eyes unseeing as his body is moved by the throng of people wrapped around him. They’ve been here long enough for his shirt to have ripped and his hair catches on his sweat soaked skin. It’s a sight Liam’s familiar with, from this exact angle that oversees as many entrances of the carbon copy of every neon-lit club he’s entered in the past month. 

Liam’s close enough to hear over the panted conversation.

“What are your plans tonight, baby?” Asks the nameless man looming over Harry. 

Harry doesn’t turn to face the body pressed against him. He finds the man's hand and brings it shamelessly to his mouth and there, right as his lips part to lay someone else’s skin on his tongue, his mouth a perfect ‘o’ around the finger, his eyes meet Liam’s in a spark of fire. 

It’s not the first time. 

Since the bus broke down things of this ilk have occurred in increasing measure. Either Harry’s trying to prove he’s not the vulnerable boy with the sea in his eyes, or he’s acting out over Liam’s refusal to politely pretend he can’t see through the painted colours, or perhaps it’s none of the above. Harry’s flair for the dramatic and ache for attention have left him as prone to mood swings as any toddler. And yet. 

The molesting Alpha smirks into Harry’s temple, tightens his perverse hold on Harry’s hip. “You do that for me?” 

Harry’s eyes. They meet Liam’s and yell, _coward_. 

“Anything.”

Liam doesn’t slam his hotel door when he arrives. He closes it with a click of the lock and places the key card in exact alignment with the corners of the dresser. 

A single lamp’s light allows him to move confidently through the shadowed room as he peels off layer by layer in a methodic count; four yanks per boot to loosen his laces and place them neatly by the door, eight buttons on his shirt until it eases off and hangs in line with an identical copy in the closet. The slip of his belt through the buckle, the click of his trousers clasp as he pulls them down and folds them neat over the desk chair at the foot of the bed. 

One clip to pinch at the base of his undershirt to free the wire of his earpiece and lay it in a coil on the bedside table. 

With a roll of his neck, he falls to the floor and launches into the nightly exercise routine so ingrained that the flow of movement tugs pleasantly on his muscles until they’re warm and elastic. The routine is quickly paced, but too monotonous to keep out senseless thoughts tugging at his focus. 

Ten sets of push-ups leave him facing the carpet a shade too yellow to match the green of Harry’s eyes. He shakes the comparison off as he rolls into a round of crunches. The flex of his core mimics the reaction he’d had this morning as Harry’d brushed past him in the kitchenette, a hand braced on Liam’s stomach when the bus had jolted with the disturbance of a pothole. 

Liam curses and bounces to his toes, eager to slide between the sheets and knock the thoughts from his head. 

When he touches the pillow his body’s exhaustion carries him quickly to sleep faster than he can count to ten, but not fast enough to keep his mind from wondering how long it would take to count the eyelashes fanned along Harry’s cheeks, and if Harry would tolerate the proximity it would take for Liam to do so. 

In the morning he dresses and packs in rote habit. He nods to Devine and takes his place at Harry’s door. When it opens, Harry’s alone, but he hasn’t been for long given the smell that trails after him. While Liam had been dreaming of eyelashes, Harry had been occupied by far more… vigorous amusements. 

“You’re being careless.” Liam says as Harry tugs his luggage into the hall and fusses with sunglasses in his hair. 

“Excuse me, Liam.” His name on Harry’s lips rings with a note of novelty that makes Liam’s nerves prickle. Harry has a hint of a condescending smile growing to full force as he speaks. “I wasn’t aware you’d taken the place of my father.” 

“You’re in clear need of one.” And Liam should stop, should have never started talking when his tone is much too barbed compared to Harry’s teasing tone, but there’s something rolling through him, something dark and bitter. The words are nails hammered into his tongue. “Calling strangers daddy won't make you loved.” 

The smirk slips off, and _no_. He hadn’t wanted that either. 

Harry doesn’t reply past a hum. He pulls down his sunnies and effectively cuts Liam’s view of his face, tousling his curls once as they march forward in stiff silence. Liam waits for him to turn around with a snap at every step, even tenses for it when Harry opens the back exit door. But Harry doesn’t turn around. 

The bitterness in Liam’s flip flopped into something he’d rather like to shake off with an apology, but he can’t give on if Harry won’t fucking looking at him. He’s working out how to unlodge Harry’s name from his throat when his opportunity escapes him. They’ve already reached the bus, warmed and ready to carry them further into damnation. Liam barely gets a foot in the door before Harry disappears up the stairs. 

The upper lounge remains locked and occupied the entire two day drive.

Soundcheck in Atlanta is a never ending purgatory. The band are antsy from being stuck in each other's pockets, their snipes backed with more barbs than their usual banter. The drummer has a tangent about losing sticks and the bassist breaks a string and Harry, well. 

He’s sprawled on the bohemian carpet at the front of the stage. Mic looming above him on the stand, nowhere close to the vocal cords needed to test its level of proficiency. His eyes are closed, hair fallen back to reveal a face more gaunt than chiseled. Despite the tiredness licking deep shadows into his features, he’s not the mirage figure of himself Liam’s seen before, still enough vibrancy to make him look peaceful.

Trained to identify threats of all kind, Liam’s eyes lock on the devil stalking across the stage with the self-important strides of someone not used to being there, boots heavy with the rush of power it must give him despite the empty chairs. 

Contempt fills Liam from fingers to toes. He deliberately keeps exchanges with the suits pulling the strings to a minimum. The management have a particular way of speaking about Harry, one that made it quite clear they saw him as a profitable item meant to look pretty. To them, Liam may as well be guarding a diamond necklace on display.

Harry doesn’t open his eyes as the band manager stands beside his rug. 

“Hospital gave word about Malik’s condition.” 

It’s incredible how quickly Harry shifts from a lounging lion in his pride into some alley cat on the defensive behind a dumpster without moving a breath's width. His eyes merely open a slit with wary fear. 

Prickles sink through the tense muscles in Liam’s arms. 

Azoff crouches to speak in a lower voice now that he’s sufficiently gained every ounce of attention there is to have from the scattered crew on stage. The squabbles between sound techs and musicians have cut off like a scratched record so they can audibly strain to catch the flick of Harry’s eyes, the lock of his shoulders, the waver to his lip as he shrinks with every word as Azoff keeps talking and _talking_.

“What the fuck!” 

In the dramatic dissonance of a miss-strummed note, the bassist jumps and yells as water drips down his back. He shakes his hair, spreading droplets out like diamonds that catch the light and attention of everyone. Or nearly everyone. 

Liam looks past the fuss at the perpetrator, the steel-eyed blond shrugging off the blame with some excuse that slips past his lips and past Liam’s ears. The rest of the band laugh it off, teasing with crude jokes about an omega’s slick, but Niall’s face drops the moment their attention fades. 

He meets Liam’s stare without challenge or submission, simply acknowledging that he knows he’s been seen, a recognition of intelligence from both sides. 

It goes on too long. 

A twitch starts in Liam’s fingers, alerting him something has changed, something is wrong. 

He scans the stage. 

The rug is empty. 

Liam’s knees instinctively brace for impact, searching for stability in the dizzying turmoil he’s quickly descending into. Each pound of Liam’s heart holds the magnitude of a kick to the bass drum. His eyes examine every corner of the stage and the arena before it, methodically scanning in rows. 

Harry was just here. It’s not possible he’s gone far, even more unlikely he’ll make it through an actual exit given the labyrinth layout of the arena. Rehearsing these facts does nothing to ease the shortness of Liam’s breath. 

His gaze loops back to Niall with accusation when he comes up blastedly empty of any hint of curls, but Niall’s turned his shoulders to face the black curtains of the stage and effectively separated himself from the rest of the world as he fiddles with the guitar in his hands, head down. Like a fucking coward. 

Liam snarls and tears away to start the search.

His fist threatens to crush the mic in his hold. 

Click. 

“Angel flew too high.” 

The team reports in turn, a constant buzz in Liam’s ear as one by one they tell him there’s been no sight of the pop star. Liam hadn’t expected them to. They’re stationed at entrance points, watching the bus, minding the gear. Harry’s not their responsibility. 

The last security member finishes their report just as Liam pushes through heavy double doors. 

“Harry.” Liam’s voice echoes through the bleached cement corridor, relief coming out in a fierce growl that ricochets in the space between them.

Liam planned on saying more. He’d planned on repeating the severity of the situation, how Harry can’t leave his detail behind and slip away like this without consequences, but the dead-eyed look Harry casts over his shoulder at Liam smothers every syllable on his lips. 

Harry hovers in front of the dressing room door. Takes a step backwards towards it, and another. 

Harry cocks his head towards the door in pantomime of the attitude he’s known for. 

“You’ve got somewhere to be, yeah?” His hand twists the door knob as his eyes grow tighter, sharper, a flash in them that reignites some of his wildness. “Won’t call him daddy, I’ll save that for you.”

Liam stands at the end of the hall for a long time after the door closes behind Harry. 

No one passes, there are no windows to show shadows moving, it’s as though the world has paused to savour the sick clench of Liam’s gut. His tongue marinates in bile. 

It’s his job to stand at the door and listen to every muffled thud that comes from the room, waiting for the one that lands too harsh.

It’s his job to listen to every sound dropped from Harry’s lips through the crack between the floor, waiting for the one that rings unwilling. 

It’s his job to be alert, attentive, accessible.

The door opens two hours and thirty seven minutes later. Liam wants to claw the knowledge of it from his head, but he can’t.

It’s his _job_. 

The show goes horribly. 

Now, at some after-after party, Harry’s off his fucking head. His clothes are more off than on, his scent completely buried under the hundreds slicked along his skin. Shameless. Pretty pink lips spread open in a breathless laugh as he moves with the crush. There’s a mouth on his neck. Liam’s been watching it since it got there, waiting for the split second it might look like teeth could get involved so he can rip Harry out from under them and right out of this overheated hell hole. 

When Harry’s head rolls towards Liam, his eyes blink without seeing, no flicker of light in his irises before his chin dips and there’s a hand that brushes curls out of the way to allow the leech to suck higher. 

People say it’s normal. 

Pop-stars party, it’s what they were made to do, so the fact that this is the sixth night in a row that Harry’s been in a scene just like this hasn’t alerted anyone who sees headlines in the papers and the buzzing blogs. 

But they haven’t seen it. Not like Liam has. 

This display is not the freedom of wealth, nor the excitement of fame, or even the enjoyment of letting loose. This is an angel falling to flames.

There are strings wound tight from Liam’s heels to his head and each one vibrates within his core. It has nothing to do with the bass of the club speakers and everything to do with this pop star being manipulated by the wills of others. A beaded drop of blood swells under Liam’s teeth where they’ve pierced through the inside of his cheek, and the damn breaks with the first hint of it on his tongue. He can’t fucking watch.

Broad shoulders and a strict routine afford him the power to infiltrate the crowd with minimal turbulence, a heat seeking missile on a streamlined path to the dying ember of his target. 

“Harry.” 

The name comes from deep in his chest, resonating in the inches of space and will power between them. Harry’s still plastered against the body of another, supported entirely by the hands and mouth on him as his head lolls until it finds Liam. The eye contact grips Liam like a hand fisted around his throat. There’s a sense he could stand here indefinitely silent and Harry would wait, unwavering. Liam’s done waiting.

“Enough.” 

The word is a knife slashed across the marionette strings. Harry tumbles out of the insidious hold and into Liam. His touch is an incandescent iron brand scalding Liam’s skin raw. Liam’s centre of gravity automatically shifts to compensate for the weight.

“Liam, can you… I need… I- Please, I… ” Senseless words roll from Harry’s liquored lips as Liam navigates a path for their retreat.

Harry doesn’t hold back the vulgarity of what he asks of Liam. With every indecent offer and plea spilling out of Harry, Liam’s skin crawls. He wants to murder every person who’s ever heard Harry like this and found it appealing. Every step through the oppressing atmosphere jostles Harry against his side, the docile warmth of him the only pinprick of reassurance Liam has. 

Despite the state Harry’s in, at least here, under Liam's arm and curled into his chest, Harry is safe. 

The cold air of the night is a startling return to clarity after the crush of the club on Liam’s senses. Harry turns quiet in the car, his silence bringing a vivid crash of reality over them, returning them to their proper places. Liam’s sat on the opposite end of the bench as each kilometre the vehicle travels allows Harry to pull away from him in a slow yet unstoppable drag, like the tide receding from shore. There’s nothing to grasp but sand. 

Harry doesn’t reach for him in the hotel. Even as his inebriation has him heavily leaning on the bland wallpaper, Harry doesn’t make a single move towards Liam. The carpet and high ceilings do nothing to dampen the pitiful sounds Harry makes as he desperately tries to steady his breath, nor does it hide the huffs of air as he grows more and more worked up with every uncertain step. He’s damn near whimpering as his shoulders curl in, his face adamantly turned away, the first ounce of shame Liam’s ever seen on him. 

Liam remains silent, a painful witness to every harsh detail of Harry’s lost composure. 

Harry needs help. He needs someone's shoulder to lean on, someone to lead him straight down this hall and swipe the key-card in the door. It’s not Liam’s right to assume that place. 

He got Harry out of a potentially dangerous situation, because that’s his job, and the rest is up to Harry to figure out. Being responsible for his own failures is enough. It took too many mistakes for Liam to find his own path, he won't be accountable for guiding someone else. 

So he pauses as Harry stops and starts in jagged determination to make it to his room, and he lets him fumble with his key card for so long there are tears of frustration on his cheeks, and he doesn’t shut the door when it remains half-way open. 

Barely a minute passes before muffled sobs bleed through the thin wooden door. Liam’s shoulders grow tighter with every half-hitched breath he hears, his jaw cracking during the silent pauses when lungs catch between whimpers. With every stuttered gasp echoing through the twenty feet of empty space and a half hinged door between them, he feels a knife lodged between his ribs. It twists to grind against the bone. 

“Harry.” His voice has lost its fierce certainty, as if he’s testing the feel of the name in his mouth. 

Liam’s kneeling beside the bed. Can’t remember making the decision to come in the room, and now that he has he’s not sure it was the right one. Knotted curls and an arm wound tight in the crumpled duvet are the only pieces visible of Harry as he tries his best to be small under the mound of goose feather and linen. 

“Harry,” Liam licks his lips and tries again when there’s no variance in heart wrenching sounds. He feels useless, unprepared. He’s careful not to touch any of the blankets even though he wants nothing more than to peel back the layers and see where the hurt is. Find a way to make it better. “What do you need?” 

Harry’s breath catches wetly in his throat. A sob fights it’s way out like he’s trying to control his lungs but they won't listen. Finally, after several painful breaths and Liam’s fists gone white on his thighs, an answer comes. 

Half the word doesn’t make it from a crack, like there’s a train in Harry’s chest clanging and grating along the tracks. 

“Niall.” 

The answer is a blow Liam saw coming. Omega, he reminds himself. Harry is an unbonded omega, and right now there could be nothing more soothing than the presence of a familiar beta. If they were friends, if Liam wasn’t still on the clock and wrapped in a wire that strung him up to the rest of the team, perhaps he could provide the comfort he craves to give. But they’re not, and he’s not, so with stiff limbs Liam stands and leaves the room. 

He has limits, and they are severely in danger of being broken if he stays within reach. He leaves the door open a crack while he resumes his place with his back to it and makes the call. 

Niall similarly leaves it open, but less on purpose and more because he’s shoved himself into the room without any control over his limbs, like every second not spent next to Harry was a second wasted. He’s a smart man. 

He slows on arriving at the bed, a tender moment Liam shouldn’t be watching but can’t look away from through the crack in the doorway. Niall places his fingertips on the foot corner of the mattress and slowly trails it up with each step he takes. As soon as he’s close enough a bare arm reaches from the blankets to latch onto him. Niall places his hand over Harry’s and holds it there, holds onto Harry’s grip on him. 

“Hazza,” Niall murmurs, head bent low so Liam can hardly hear. 

“I nee- I need-” Harry’s harsh whines start and stop painfully loud in the fragile moment.

Niall puts a knee on the bed to get close, strokes a hand through curls as Harry starts to emerge from the cloud of sheets, the skin of his back on full display, his unblemished spine a river of cream that brings to mind angelic grace despite the anguished sounds slipping through his mouth.

“I know, Haz.” The words are soothing in Niall’s gentle croon, but there’s an undercurrent of sadness, a glint of sorrow in his eyes, as he moves. 

Liam turns the knob and pulls the door shut as Niall leans in closer, the space between door and frame diminishing in time with the disappearance of space between Niall and Harry. 

Liam untwists the knob slowly, silently. He turns his back. Doesn’t listen to the world shattering. 

“You can’t blame him.” 

“Is it an omega thing?” 

“No.” Piercing blue eyes glare him down. “It’s a Harry thing.” 

Liam shrugs, not really sure what that means either. His hands are in his pockets so he doesn’t cross his arms. He doesn’t want to be on the defensive here. He should be thankful for Niall, especially when it’s clear just how much Harry needed him. The pop star is in the shower now, pieces of his sweet voice coming through the walls as he sings something Liam’s heard Niall humming over a guitar before, and it should be comforting to know his charge has been taken care of. Is safe. 

But Liam is still recovering from the knife Harry’s drastic fall from grace drove into his ribs and the ache it left radiates every time a flash memory of Harry’s sobbing echoes in his mind. He feels unsteady, like he’s two steps behind while everyone else has moved on.

Liam wishes Niall were a smoker, so maybe he could provide Niall with a light and they could smoke in silence like it meant something, but really it’d just be a thing to do so the ash on his tongue would bury the taste of blood. Instead Liam folds his arms and stares over Niall’s shoulder at the plain face of the door. 

Neither of them smoke, and Liam doesn’t carry matches. 

“He’s been grabbed at since he was sixteen, people scrabbling just to get a piece of him, to get close. But they don’t want _him_ , they want Harry Styles, and once they’ve taken something from him they leave. But Haz,” Niall breathes like the name has knocked the air from his lungs. He looks away now, a little shake of his head to himself, and that blade Liam thought was pulled out of his chest sinks an inch deeper. 

The look on Niall’s face as he thinks of Harry tells Liam more than his words. “He doesn’t know how to give them something that doesn’t exist. So he gives ‘em the only thing he has, and they love him for it. For a little while.” 

“And you?” 

“He needed to know it can mean something, sometimes.” 

The question that’s been simmering for weeks boils over Liam’s lips. “What’s it mean?”

Since first witnessing the enigma of this thing tying the beta and omega together he’s burned to know. Betas rarely bond, some swear it’s near impossible even, and though Liam knows by the blank skin their necks that what’s going on isn’t the unbreakable tie marriage often preceded by years, it’s the closest thing Liam has to compare the undefined dependency to.

“Not everyone takes.” Niall rolls his bottom lip in, tongues the corner of it in thought. “I can only give so much, it’s not to be for us like that.” He shakes his head slowly at the thought with his hands on his hips. He doesn’t sound pained, or longing, or heartbroken. Just sad. It’s just bloody sad. Niall’s eyes say as much when they turn towards Liam. “He’ll find someone real one day, but until then he’s got me.”

He brushes past Liam lightly. If he were an Alpha, Liam would have taken it as a challenge, and if he were an Omega he would have read it as a coy tactic. Niall’s neither. He’s a beta, and his touch leaves no trace and drives no craving, it is simply a point of connection as though Niall’s merely shown they’re both here, together. In the same place at the same time. Liam finds comfort in that.

When Devine reports for his shift Liam turns him around without so much as a word. There must be something in Liam’s eyes, in the solidity of his crouched stance, that convinces the other man to walk away. Liam can’t walk away. He spends the entire night crouched before the hotel door, elbows planted on his thighs and hands fisted by his mouth as he stares at the slip of space left between the door and frame. 

For the first time in years he doesn’t do his sets. No push ups, sit ups, pull ups. He doesn’t close his eyes to sleep at oh-one-hundred and he doesn’t wake at oh-seven-hundred because he’s been awake through the night. He can’t move a centimetre. Not when he knows the treasure on the other side of the door is too vulnerable to leave. 

It haunts him. 

The way Harry had been between the dance floor and the car, that small pocket of time where the intermittent dark and the fog of alcohol had made Harry forget where they were going, who he was going with. The way he’d tried to meld his body with Liam’s, had tried to make Liam’s hands press into his skin, the friction and wetness of his gasps as he’d listlessly gone with Liam. The things he’d asked Liam to do, the way he’d described how he wanted it done, the sheer desperation braided into the fibres of his being. They flit through Liam’s head for seconds at a time before he can cut them off, like visions from another life. Liam could have been anyone. Harry would have done that with anyone. 

The ragged sound of Harry begging his name echoes in his hollow chest. Liam’s fists tighten. He blinks. The door doesn’t move. 

Seconds, hours, decades later the door opens. A head rush threatens to wipe Liam’s vision from him, but he manages to see the watery redness of Harry’s eyes behind the curls he’s tossed back into perfection and a new outfit, a thin enough veil of normality to trick those not looking for more. 

Harry meets his eye without a speck of lingering embarrassment. “Thank you.” 

Standing must have swirled more than the blood in his head, because before Liam can predict it, Harry ducks in close with a waft of hotel soap. Chapped lips catch the edge of Liam’s cheek with a gentle rasp on his stubble. There and gone, just like the man they’re attached to as Harry walks away without a look back. 

Harry walks a straight line this morning despite what must be a nasty hangover. He’s put the pieces of himself together again. The strength it must have taken, the maturity to not hide as though he’d done something wrong. It makes Liam brace on the wall behind him. 

Harry’s aim was no mistake. 

The patch of Liam’s skin Harry’s lips met tingles so vibrantly that Liam fights not to raise a hand to smooth over the edge of his jaw, a place so few have ever touched, right where it was universally known a nip on an Alpha meant one thing and one thing only: Deference. 

Harry saunters even here, in the closed Nashville dressing room with no one to see. Liam sees. He stands by the door and watches with idle curiosity as Harry’s fingers trail over the display of food and beverages left for his pleasure. Liam walked in this room before him, took a gliding glance at the offerings and knew immediately Harry would choose a banana, a water bottle, and surreptitiously pocket a packet of sweets that would tint his lips fuschia as he sucked on them after the show. Like a stroke to his spine, watching Harry pick exactly this is a settling comfort. 

Before this, on stage four sound check as Harry ran through lazy scales and operatic versions of his songs to his own amusement, Liam had watched one of the venue PA’s offer him a hot tea. Harry thanked them with the youthful earnesty he was known for and gently placed it by an amp, where every drop of it grew cold. Harry had started lacing his boots onto his feet when the techs had announced their satisfaction. Liam took the moment of his distraction to loop around the stage and get the blood flowing through his legs. He followed Harry’s shoulders back to the dressing room with a small twitch to his lips. The tea had been chamomile. 

There is a collection of tea on the bus, black and decaf enjoyed with milk and sugar and spiced rooibos for especially dreary nights and sweet herbals rarely taken down as a treat, but in all the boxes and bags there’s not a single petal of chamomile. Harry twirled into the dressing room with a laugh at the rest of the boys, chatting amiably and sprawling carelessly across those seated on the sofa. Liam has remained on the edge where he’s comfortable. 

If he strays particularly close to the kettle and clicks it on for a boil, he can’t say why. When Harry purrs with happy satisfaction when he finally frees himself and finds the water hot, well. Liam sure doesn’t smile, but he could if he wanted to. 

Artificial berry stained lips glisten as they wrap around a bottle after the show.

The band and crew are rowdy as they mingle between parked busses and scatter around the empty lot they occupy for the night. Devine stands by with his arms leisurely crossed but his eyes still sharp as he chats amiably with members of the crew he’s friendly with while not letting Harry out of his sight. 

Liam should be sleeping, but not even he could sleep through the joyful mayhem. They’re celebrating something, someone’s birthday or the halfway mark of tour or maybe just the fact that they finally have three full days before another show, the longest break they’ll get before the end of tour in a month's time. 

Someone started a water fight earlier, leaving silk shirts and cotton jeans slicked to skin. Now someone’s broke out cans of silly string and it's a free for all in hot pink. Beneath it Harry’s chest gleams, tattoos peeking from his shirt while he tousles his hair and laughs wide at some suggestive joke Niall’s made in a stage whisper, both of them too tipsy and sociable to keep their voices down. 

Harry’s laughter could never be made a melody, it’s the cacophony of an orchestra in discord, and it bursts through the murky half-light of street lamps like crashing cymbals. A notch loosens in Liam’s bones at the sound. A chain reaction clinks through every vertebrae, as though Liam has been walking with a spine out of line until now. 

Harry takes another sip from the glass bottle. It’s the last of it, he has to tip his head far back to get the dregs and Liam hadn’t planned on staring, had only been habitually scanning through the crowd of faces for anything out of line, but now his eyes are snared on the damp hair clinging to Harry’s neck and the pronunciation of his jawline.

He’s close before he knows he’s moved, a crinkling bottle of water in his hands he can’t remember grabbing. 

In the last few steps before he reaches Harry, Liam cracks the cap. The sound is nearly lost under the chatter and yet it’s enough to pull Harry’s eyes his way. Under his watchful gaze Liam lifts the bottle to his mouth. A burst of crisp water is a sweet relief for his dry mouth, and though he savours it, he stops himself from taking more.

With one more step Liam’s close enough to raise the bottle between them. His hands don’t shake and his eyes don’t waver as he makes his offer. Liam would swear on his life he’s somehow transported from the solid ground to a tightrope. 

Slowly Harry curls a hand around the bottle, his fingers scorching where they lay over Liam’s before he lets go. Intensity sharpens Liam’s focus as he watches Harry bring the bottle to his stained lips, the rim still damp with Liam’s taste, and now, the both of them. It’s not until Liam’s muscles melt that he realises they’d been tense in the first place. Expecting rejection only to receive sincere acceptance. 

That night it takes a long time for Liam to get any sleep. 

“Thank fuck that’s over,” Harry growls. 

His boots stomp across the oil-stained street of a busy city, away from one of the several radio station offices they’ve been cooped up in all morning. Liam isn’t looking at Harry’s scowl and the annoyed flick of his eyes at the unaware pedestrians that dare graze a little too close. He’s too busy watching everything that moves for something higher than a seven on the threat scale. So far Harry himself is the only thing that ranks. 

They’ve waved the car away already, Luther doing circles around the block or probably sitting in a KFC parking lot close by until Harry’s spiteful determination finally loses out to the pain of his ridiculous fashion boots Liam despises given their lack of running capabilities. They do give sway to Harry’s hips, but not when the pop star is having a stomping strop in the midst of a crowded street. 

“They’ve got no bloody idea,” Harry mutters under breath as he navigates through the stream of people. A morning spent making appearances and the look on his face reminds Liam of his own in the mirror when his gloves make solid contact with a bag. 

“Harry.” Liam’s tone is even, not loud but strong. 

It cuts Harry off and he looks up like he’s waiting for direction and this look, this is exactly why Liam hasn’t made a habit of saying his name. Because every time he does Harry answers with his full attention and sometimes that’s too much for Liam to hold. 

Liam nods his chin down the street at something he’d seen earlier when scouting the area on the maps. His heart lurches into his throat and clogs his airways as he waits for a reaction. 

Harry’s eyes light up at the sight of shining gold letters. A hint of hesitancy pulls the corner of his lip down. 

“There’s two more interviews,” a squint, “I think.” He looks at Liam with a question mark on his face.

There are. One at sixteen-hundred at some posh restaurant, and another in a hotel, but not the one they’re staying in. 

Liam raises an eyebrow. “So be quick.” 

Harry raises an eyebrow back at him, twice as high, lips parted with words on his tongue that might lead to a quip about sexual prowess Liam doesn’t want to hear, but maybe Harry knows that because he swallows them down before marching towards the luxury retail store with more bounce, more sway, to his steps than before. 

A clamp squeezes Liam’s heart with increasing strength every second he spends inside the store. Filled with absurd decor and ridiculously patterned outfits, Harry shines. It hurts. Because Harry’s cheeks flush with excitement and his eyes sparkle with wonder and he’s a kid in a sweets shop, and that hurts more, because Harry was a _child_ when he started his descent into fame, in some ways still is one, and Liam’s never seen him like this. This genuine. This bright. 

Luther calls twenty minutes later and Liam tells him to return to their hotel until Liam sends word. Azoff calls next. Liam keeps his words short and clear against the barking man until the interviews are canceled. Harry continues to smile, none the wiser. Five minutes into the store at the very first hint of the stunning beauty that is Harry’s happiness, Liam had mildly suggested turning his phone off. It sits blank-faced and silent in Liam’s pocket like a battery removed from a toy that too many people fought to control. 

There’s a melody on Harry’s lips. Some pop tune that’s not his own but could be with the way he’s commandeering it now between discussing colour palettes and silhouettes with the clerks swarmed to him like moths to a flame. Liam can’t blame them. Harry is blazing with passion. Amongst the floral linen and chiffon ruffles, Harry’s beauty glows. 

“What do you think?” 

Harry’s in a silk shirt with bold orange flowers mixed with smaller blues, a pleased smile quirked at the corner like he knows he looks good. The clerks have assured him he’s perfect in whatever he wears, particularly if it’s of the current season, but Harry’s question has cut them off and left them silent. If Harry simply wanted someone to tell him he looks good, he wouldn’t be asking Liam. 

Liam narrows his eyes. Looks at the way the bold pattern contrasts Harry’s skin that’s grown paler the longer he spends in a bus and concrete buildings than lounging beside pools. It’s bold and eye catching, the details small enough to keep the interest after the initial hook. He meets Harry’s eyes and raises his eyebrow. Harry’s cheeks have flushed, from the excitement of the store or the attention, and he turns slowly, clumsily, under Liam’s gaze. 

Across the shoulders is a prowling tiger. Liam meets Harry’s eyes in the mirror.

“It suits you.” 

Harry tugs the bottom hem, his eyes nervous as they flicker between the shirt and meeting Liam’s over his shoulder in the mirror. The flush on his cheeks deepens. 

“Thank you,” he says in the deep sincere voice of his. He smooths the front of the shirt like it’s something delicate. 

A touch on his elbow causes Liam to jump with a start, a growl caught in his throat but stifled just in time to see an equally startled clerk offering him citrus refreshments. The clink of ice on glass brings crystal clarity chiming through his brain.

Harry’s charming a valet now, the other man completely hooked on the genuine spark of joy in Harry’s eyes. Liam may as well be looking in a mirror, he realizes with a start. Liam’s no different than this faceless man. No different than the crowds of admirers that fawn over the pop star in droves. The smiles Harry shares, the flirtations he gives, all of it amounts to no more than what Harry gives to passing strangers. 

This moment, however long Liam gets to enjoy it, is an indulgence of a fool’s gold shine. Whatever sense of importance he may have thought it held is wholly imagined. 

Soon they’ll return to their proper places on the board as pieces set to pass each other by without a mark. Liam’s contract will end. Harry will go wherever he calls home. It’s proof of how foolish he’s been that for once, Liam has no fucking idea where that is.

He breathes in the perfume and cucumber of the room, and beneath it, the steady anchor of Harry’s contentment. 

Liam doesn’t take the drink, but he lets Harry have this. Lets them both have this, for now. 

“The first one is the worst, mate. Like tar.” 

“Not even human I reckon,” one of the touring crew shakes his head and stumbles as he receives a nudge from the other. 

“That’s me kid, ya.” 

“Ryan! Congrats mate, can’t believe you’re a da’ now,” Niall shoves in naturally as he and Harry pass the other way, his brogue strong in company of other countrymen. “Cute as a button, swear on me life I’d be proper proud if I was you. Little jealous meself.” 

The crew member rolls his eyes in fond amusement. “Cheers. Like you’re ever gonna worry about nappies in yer life, both of you’s.” 

There. 

Right as the others laugh about Ryan’s misadventures with newborn nappies, something shifts in Harry’s stance. 

Click. _“Richards for Payne.”_

Liam’s mic clicks beneath his finger. “Go for Payne.”

 _“Uncooperative bogie located in load-”_ the mic clicks off mid word before continuing a second later with a straining voice. _“Loading bay. Assistance requested.”_

It’s the worst time for this to happen, two of his crew down for lunch rotation and a handful spread throughout the venue, the rest sleeping off-shift to ready for the nightly change-over. He weighs the risks. 

“Copy. Payne responding.” 

Harry’s back is halfway to the bus, probably for a kip in the lounge before the show tonight. Liam watches the door close behind him before turning towards the direction of Richards, knowing the layout by heart despite entering the building for the first time. 

The bunk sequestered in the bus has sheets pulled tight and a bedspread laid flat, topped with a single pillow. Liam peels back the layers and slips in without disturbing the tucked corners. Closes his eyes. 

“Payne.” 

Muscles lock. The curtain silently opens to reveal Devine’s too familiar frown. A twinge of a headache spikes Liam’s temples from his clenched jaw. He stands and dresses in less than thirty seconds. 

“Horan hasn’t seen him since he left the nest. Seventeen minutes ago,” he answers before Liam asks. 

Seventeen minutes too bloody long. Liam can’t be glued to Harry at all times no matter how much he’d sometimes like to be physically tied to him, and that’s a dangerous way of thinking but damnit. He’s not taken two steps when the solid lump in his pocket makes itself known. His hand clenches around the familiar mobile he finds. 

“Damnit,” he growls under his breath.

His skin isn't thick enough to block the thrum of his pulse from being felt. Pain pierces his temples, sharp enough to make him squint. His steps are sure and quick as he prowls off the bus, across the rubble of the car park, slams open the door to the venue and into the sickly wash of fluorescents. His footfalls echo through the scuffed halls as he tears a path throughthe loading dock of haphazard pillaged gear cases, the vacant greenroom with a fresh bunch of bananas that hasn’t been touched, the dressing room without a used towel tossed over the rack.

The door of the band’s green room cracks unders his hand, hinges screaming under the force with which he yanks it open.

Liam wants to drag Niall by the ears until he tells him where Harry is, surely the beta must know, but the tight look on his face between a pile of lanky band member limbs on the sofa is all Liam needs to know it’d be a waste of time. 

There is _no time_. 

Harry’s not back when the sun hits the centre of the sky and Liam’s shift would naturally start. 

Liam keeps Devine on overtime to contact family members for the last time they heard from Harry, has the team disperse through the venue crew, the band members, the bus drivers. He narrowly avoids throwing a fist through the wall as he contacts management and listens to Azoff rattle off how much cancelling tonight's show would cost, the monetary value of a human being. 

Harry’s not there for soundcheck. 

No one will meet anyone’s eyes. There are no jokes today. Short, tight sentences of necessity to get the job done with anger and frustration and concern rolling from the band members in turn. Liam’s only there for a quick scan to see what he predicted: the solitary mic centre stage, unattended. It sits cradled in the cold plastic grip of the stand waiting for the right hand to curve around it with instinctual familiarity and lips to press sweet melodies into its pores, its presence only emphasising what’s not there. 

Someone’s turned their amp at the wrong angle and caught a loop, searing feedback rings out, enough to unsnag Liam’s eyes from the mic. 

He turns his back to the empty audience and the silent stage. Keeps looking. 

He hears him first. 

“-really fucking fine,” reverberates from the green room, halting Liam’s steps, breath, pulse.

The sound of impact of an object thrown at a wall. 

“No, you’re really fucking stu-” Niall cuts off the second his eyes meet Liam’s over a shoulder of curly hair. 

Liam stops in the doorway. He doesn’t need to go any further. Harry looks over his shoulder with lazy disinterest, his eyes quick to look past him. 

“Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

The words wash past Liam completely unregistered. His surprise isn’t in finding Harry here, less than thirty minutes before doors open, because someone had seen him slip in the gate by the buses and alerted Liam of his return. 

It’s the smell. 

The revolting stench of another person that emanates from Harry like petrol fumes. 

It’s an exaggeration, Liam knows. Scents are personal. They’re generally unnoticed and hard to distinguish unless it’s been brought out by the unfortunate exaggeration of it in the sour twist of sweat, otherwise left only to gather from the intimate press of a nose to a hairline in a proper scenting. People don’t smell like spring flowers or pine trees, they smell human, whatever that means in their own unique way. 

Liam knows what Harry smells like. He’s written the knowledge off as a side effect of the job, some fact he’s known but never used. It’s undeniable now that he’s instinctivelylooked for it with the first step into this room, attempted to latch onto it like a grounding pin secures a current, and he’s got no idea when he started doing so, and isn’t that the fucking issue. 

“Vocal warm up in ten, go take a shower,” Niall’s voice stirs the dead air of the room, accompanied with a nod at Harry. 

“Gonna join?” And the words are meant for Niall, but Harry hasn’t looked away from Liam yet. 

They shouldn’t have any affect on him. He’s seen this side of Harry a thousand times in the weeks they’ve been on this tour, yet... Liam’s fists curl. 

Niall exaggerates a scowl and shoves the smirking star away from him. He and Liam watch Harry disappear towards the washroom, Niall’s gaze trailing from him to Liam. It’s unreadable, and maybe he’s trying to remind Liam of his words from the hallways in Atlanta, but it’s pointless. They’re not in this together like some ‘take care of the pop star’ club. Harry is not Liam’s friend, he’s his responsibility. 

And he failed. 

Liam slides the mobile out of his pocket and places it neatly in front of the bulb ringed mirrors reflecting several angles of the same man back to him. Harry’s false shine has been revealed, and he’ll continue to sparkle while Liam’s left the fool. Distracted like a bird tricked into a cage. This fallacy has played out to it’s unrewarding end, he can drop it now. He was never meant to carry anybody's secrets but his own. 

Behind him the door closes with a solid thump of finality. 

“You’re failing.” 

There’s a card tournament happening in the back lounge between the band and their sound techs, their not-so-distant cries of excitement and disappointment heard through the curtains. 

A large chunk of silence after the words makes Liam turn to see Niall glaring down at him. His aura of nonchalance is disturbed by the hand he puts on the table to steady himself against the jostle of the moving bus. Liam eyes the half empty water glass he’s got in front of him. There’s no spill around it yet.

They’re lucky word of it never got out about the disappearance days ago. The crowd had welcomed Harry as they always do, blinded by amore and unaware of how close they teetered on disappointment. Liam should direct Niall towards Azoff with his complaints, tell him to point the finger and get him fired. Nothing less than he fucking deserves. 

But this isn’t about the job

“No worse than you.” 

Niall shoves into the neighbouring seat and presses their sides together. Only Liam’s activated core keeps him from being plowed into the window. The flame in Niall’s eye is a rare sight to see in an even-tempered beta, a true testament to how deep Liam’s words have hit. 

“You got something to say?”

The truth is harsh, but Liam won’t go easy when it sits between them like a swollen infection. Liam stays as steady as his gaze and cuts through Niall’s scar tissue. 

“You enable him.” 

The blow of it ripples through Niall in a visible wave, a twitch of impact and a hardness solidifying in the corner of his eyes. 

“I can’t watch him crawl tooth and nail when I’ve got two legs to carry him with,” Niall growls. 

Defensive. Retreating.

Liam savours the millimetres he’s gained to breathe. He presses for more. “He’ll never learn to walk.” 

It has the opposite effect. Instead of backing down, Niall hits back with an arm behind Liam’s head gripping the leather seat so hard it groans, closing the space between them so they’re effectively tucked into the crease of the window. The outside world is an unaffected blur passing behind them. 

“He was starting to get the hang of it before you cut ‘im at the knees.” Niall’s breath is aggressive with heat on Liam’s neck. “It’s a test, Liam. He’s showing you what’s not on the table and you’ve dismissed the rest like rubbish.” 

Sharp pain stings from where Liam’s nails have pierced his palms. Somehow Niall’s made a flush blooms in Liam’s chest that presses against his collar and swells his throat, like the deep seeded shame of a reprimanded schoolboy. But it’s not Niall causing this whiplash nausea Liam’s struggling to swallow down. 

A burst of laughter from the back lounge is the pin to pop the balloon of Liam’s anger. 

“He’s the one hiding behind a curtain. If he wanted to be, he’d be the one sitting here.” 

Niall snarls. “The boy in my bed has shown himself to you in a way taking his clothes off will never imitate. You’ve cranked your head so far the other way it’s halfway up your arse.” Niall’s free hand slaps the table and Liam curses with the way it makes him jump. He turns to face Niall straight on, their faces a hair's width apart as Niall stares him down. “Show him you fucking care the way I know you do.” 

Liam’s chest swells. “You think you know how I feel?” 

Impossible. Liam himself doesn’t know. Can’t define the twist that occurs every time he sees the particular shade of green captured in Harry’s eyes. 

“You have to.” Niall growls, but it’s got an undercurrent of a whine, too much desperation in it to be forceful. 

Niall shoves himself out of the bench. He stands at the head of the table to show he’s not fleeing, not withdrawing. Simply done making his point, and even with the wetness of his lashes he looks furious, a rage that surely can’t be aimed at Liam alone. 

The anger dims the longer they look at each other. A recognition of kinship beneath bad blood. 

When it comes, Niall’s voice is mollified like an admission of a scared child. 

“He’s going to drown.” 

The whir of the wind passing by the bus fills Liam’s ears like white noise after Niall’s disappearance. A wetness makes Liam look at the hand he’s put on the table to steady himself. The glass has tipped over and spreads it’s contents across the table in a shallow pool. Without a damn care for the mess it’ll make, Liam watches it drip off the edge. 

It’s _never been_ about the job. 

A tidal wave of sound crashes through the arena. It’s infinitely echoed through the open mic the glistening boy holds in the air with an exuberant smile.

The crowd is a mass that takes concentration to focus on individually. A girl with braided pigtails and running mascara tells Harry he’s her saviour, scars running down her naked forearms. A woman with frizzy curls and a wedding ring makes a vulgar comment about Harry’s backside. A preteen screams in sheer joy. Together their voices buzz through the speakers and wash over the pop prince.

Compelled by the gravity of the moment, Liam steels himself with a steady breath and looks at Harry properly for the first time tonight. The display of adoration has hit Harry with such force he’s turned bashful, the moment bringing colour to his face as the mass starts to sing his own words back to him with unanimous harmony. 

It’s unavoidable. The silk scarf wrapped to frame his face and push back his curls is a pretty thing, a bold pattern that draws nearly as much attention as the star who wears it. The sight of it makes Liam’s lungs fill with cotton. 

He forcefully tears his eyes away. Looks into the crowd, analises the details of every guest there to distract himself. A phone call and simple delivery arrangements had been easy enough to procure, more time spent deliberating between patterns than anything else. Liam hadn’t thought about what would happen when it arrived. What Harry would do when faced with the gift. The delicate way he would finger the silk.

He hadn’t expected Harry to wear it so boldly. Perhaps folded in a square or tucked in a pocket, not right where it was ignorable to every soul in the building. It’s worse than any mark Liam could ever make on skin. This was something Harry could take off, hide, ignore. And he’s wearing it proudly before eighty thousand sets of eyes. 

Liam shifts his weight, clenches his hands around his biceps where his arms cross his chest, clears his throat. Blinks. None of it dispels the merciless ache of this _feeling_. This unrelenting thing seeping through his veins and scorching every nerve from the inside out. He stands locked in place, a man on fire. 

The show goes on.

In the depths of the night, when the world finds fragile silence, Liam moves with phantom grace through the curtains to the row of bunks. A dim light emanates from a half pulled curtain, calling Liam’s eye to the bunk as he passes. A slip of colour snags him. 

Harry’s slumped with arms crossed and face turned into the padded bus wall, the angle revealing the taught line of his neck beneath the collar of his hooded jumper. He’s showered, changed, and still the scarf remains, now twisted and tied in a small knot at the base of his throat. 

Someone shuffles in another bunk, the noise pulling Liam out of his trance. He’s been staring. He ducks his head and thanks the shadows cover to hide the way he absently rubs his chest, like somehow he can soothe the deep set ache. 

Behind his lids he’s plagued by the vision of silk resting in the crook of Harry’s neck and shoulder, resting where a bond mark would go. 

He closes his eyes against the dark and mutters an unsteady curse with growing realization. This feeling he’s been carrying around, it might be _yearning_.

It’s a slip. An easy one he barely notices, as though the words have been said a thousand times when truly Liam’s never had the thought of them in his mind. 

Harry’s ahead of him on the steps as they unload from the bus under the gentle grey sky of a new city. The roadies have already spilled from the buses, enjoying the free time they have before work begins for tomorrow's show. Someone holds a glass bottle out for Harry. 

“Nah, thanks mate.” 

The crew member shrugs and pops the top for himself, turning to continue a discussion with the person next to him.

Liam takes the last step. “Good boy.” 

The words are low, a thoughtless rumble in his chest no one hears but Harry. 

Harry stills, and with him, Liam’s heart. 

Liam steals himself for a push back. For Harry’s indignant anger at the lack of respect, the overt belittlement of the praise more commonly used to degrade an omega. Instead he gets a sheepish tilt of Harry’s chin and a tentatively warm glance. The easy reception nearly knocks Liam backwards like an unblocked sucker-punch. 

He doesn’t know what to do with it, so he ignores it. 

Harry doesn’t seem to mind, already moving on to join the rest of his band in a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Liam watches from the side of the bus. The glancessent his way, curious and bright? He ignores those too. 

The next day soundcheck is all the same people as it always is, doing the same thing they always do. Liam shouldn’t be thrumming with nervous energy, shouldn’t be hyper-aware of the fruit flies conjugating over a rubbish bin and the bored venue staff watching from the nosebleeds. But he is. Because every sense he possesses is yelling in alarm that Harry is in danger. 

The words to bring things to stop are on the tip of Liam’s tongue before he bites them down with a grind of his jaw. He’s not Harry’s keeper and he’s sure as shit not his Alpha. If Harry wants to play childish games he’s welcome to it.

“It should really be the other way, you’re fucking tall.”

“Aw don’t worry, you’re enough man for me,” Harry retorts from where he clings to the roadie’s back, long limbs absurdly twisted to keep him from falling flat on his arse. 

Someone is going to break something. It’s all Liam can think as he watches six grown-arsed men compete in piggy-back races across the stage, then a human wheelbarrow race, then just as they’re discussing the logistics of a three-legged race without anything to tie legs together, Harry catches sight of Niall returning from a piss break. The blond smiles easily at Harry as the popstar walks precariously close to the edge of the apron. 

Liam sees what’s going to happen with just enough time to stop it. 

“No.” 

Harry halts every uncoordinated limb in his body before he can jump from the stage like an absolute idiot. Niall’s still half a click away down an aisle and his steps slow just enough for Liam to notice, but not enough to distract him from the confused Harry looking down at him as Liam marches in front of the stage. He doesn’t stop until he’s directly in front of Harry.

Understanding takes a moment to flit through Harry’s features and Liam’s stomach clenches in the pause where he waits for Harry to accept or deny his help. How stupid it is to feel so much over so little.

It doesn’t feel little when Harry’s hands easily find Liam’s shoulders, when Liam grips the soft spot of Harry’s waist and lifts, when he gently places him on the floor. Eternity stretches between those seconds.

Liam’s hands pull back immediately, but Harry’s… they linger. An arm wrapped around Liam’s shoulder to keep him steady in a way Liam can’t be sure wasn’t faked unbalance, the press of Harry’s entire body alongside his own. It’s nothing like the night Liam hauled Harry out of a club, or the way Harry’s known to slide against people with clear intent and innuendo. This is clumsy, awkward, a puppy with feet too large tripping over himself with eager energy. 

Hopefully it’s okay then, that the delight blooming in Liam is childishly proud, and even the watchful eye of Niall can’t dampen it. 

Later, waiting in the hall as Harry croons something in a post-show shower, Liam’s hands move from his biceps to his shoulders. Arms crossed in an x over himself, he feels the echo of Harry’s touch where he’d squeezed to hold on. For that brief moment Liam had carried Harry, taken his weight, and slowed his fall. Kept him safe. Liam’s fingers press deeper into the meat of his lats to chase the memory. 

Harry wasn’t heavy. 

The city of angels. Of dreams. 

The band is silent on the bus the entire drive into the city, tiptoeing across tightropes and making themselves scarce. Liam sits at the table. If he puts his palms flat on the face of it he can feel the ominous hum vibrating the air. 

Eleven weeks ago Harry walked down the wrong street. That same night Zayn Malik had been admitted with severe internal bleeding and a perforated lung, and four hours later while Zayn had remained on the operating table and his blood no doubt had still glistened like a grease stain under street lamps, Liam had received the phone call about this job. 

No one questions the extra day off in the city where it happened. 

The exhaust of the bus still hasn’t cleared by the time Liam is following Harry into a waiting car. The front passenger seat gives him no mirrors and no way to see a glimpse of the silent pop star in the backseat unless Liam obnoxiously twists around. His hands clench on his thighs to keep himself from doing just that. 

Navigating the private hospital is painless. Liam can finally breathe now Harry’s in front of him in plain sight, even with the unnaturally delicate air around him. They turn a corner. 

Harry’s stumbles. Liam instinctively puts a hand on his back to steady him. 

“Louis?” Harry chokes on the name. 

A man stands like a ghost at the end of the hall, a gaunt form silhouetted by the white light of a frosted window. Beneath a sweep of dull brown hair are features set in fierce fortitude. 

Harry’s throat audibly works in the silence. 

“Why are you here?” 

Liam watches Harry struggle decide where to look, his focus flicking between Louis’ stare and the open doorway behind. 

The tension filling the hall rolls goosebumps over Liam’s flesh. There’s something like a layer of mold growing thick along the walls and dampening the air, sticky spores sprouting in his lungs. He wants to demand an explanation for the cause of such insidious unease. 

He scans through what he knows of Zayn, the man he replaced and has never met. In the solitary tower of his mind, the name of this stranger doesn’t ring a bell. There’s nothing to explain the way Harry presses back into Liam’s chest like he wants to sink past him and straight out of sight. Liam struggles to keep from shifting in front of him and covering him properly. 

“Pretty fucking hard not to be,” Louis spits, full of bitterness. 

There’s a silence that rings with everything he’s not saying, so loud even Liam can grasp the meaning. Like the words were an answer to the question Liam never voiced, Liam can see the way the man hasn’t taken a step further from the door to meet them, the way his body curls towards it like he’s fighting a noose hooked and tied off in the room. Louis pulls away his hand like he hadn’t meant to lift it, but it’s too late, because it’s clear he was rubbing against the crease of his neck. Right where the mark of teeth stain his skin. 

He’s bonded.

Liam’s eyes lock on the naked ring finger curled around Louis’ sweater cuff. A bond comes after marriage as a lifetime commitment second only to children. Louis doesn’t wear the mark well either, the area red and raised with irritation like it’s been scratched at. 

Rot begins to seep into Liam’s bones and softens his discipline at the sight of something so sacred made a burden. He itches to turn around and leave it’s very presence, especially given the way Harry looks like he’s found himself on a path somewhere he didn’t want to be on. Something about all of this isn’t right. 

Louis loses his tug of war with the doorway. With an unreadable look cast their way he hunches into the room like it pains him. Harry follows and the absence of his heat forces Liam to stifle a shiver. He follows a step behind.

Liam’s never met Zayn Malik. He doesn’t plan on counting this as their first meeting, already wants to erase every ounce of unease this moment contains from his mind. 

On a bed full of wrinkled sheets the man doesn’t rest peacefully. Sweat beads his brow and coats his body while the expanse of his chest is plastered in white gauze with rust coloured pools oozing through. Machines cling to him like tree roots in search of life. A ragged rattle emanates from Zayn’s chest with every laborious breath. 

Harry’s voice is as unsteady as his knees. 

“Why is he… ?” 

Harry’s gaze darts between Louis and the man who saved his life. He looks lost, untethered. Liam rocks back on his heels to keep from reaching out.

Louis’ face is dour. He’s holding the crumbling pieces of himself tightly on the cusp of the room. Incredible. With his bondmate so grievously injured, the drive to get closer must be scraping his fleshy insides raw. And yet. He’s in a corner of the room the furthest from the bed, so colourless he fades into the pale walls like a phantom. 

“There’s an infection.” Louis’ dark eyes don’t look away from the man on the bed, a hand placed by his mouth like perhaps he could shove his words back down his own throat. Or maybe it’s fisted there to keep from scratching at his mark. “He’s been in and out of surgery, they can’t locate it.” 

Liam watches the words and their meanings hit Harry. The steady flow of tears spilling over his eyes and rolling down to the tip of his chin. The forefinger on Liam’s right hand twitches to catch them before they fall. 

Liam looks at Louis to distract himself. There’s still so much space between Louis and Zayn. Liam can’t get over the unnaturalness of Louis’ restraint and he scrutinizes him with narrow eyes until just enough scent comes through beneath the antiseptic and urine. The pieces click together. His eyes widen with shock. 

Louis’ a beta. 

It takes Harry a few attempts to find his voice. “Jeff said he was fine, I would have come if—”

Louis’ snarl cuts him off. “Azoff is a rat-arsed bastard who wouldn’t relay your mum’s death, he’s too fucking busy wanking over revenue streams that’d be cut off if you canceled a show.” 

Harry smears the tears on his cheeks with clumsy swipes, his own breath growing haggard and wet the longer they’re in this room. 

Liam’s still attempting not to stare at the beta’s bondmark. With the steel strength shining in his eyes it’s clear there’s no way he would have it unless he made the decision to accept the bond, to allow an Alpha to sink their teeth into his skin and tie their lives together for life. He must have wanted it, chosen it. 

Harry sucks in a snotty sniffle. “He’s not, though? I mean he’s not…” 

They all look to the man struggling to stay alive on the bed. The silence is filled with the slow beep of his heart and the grating drag of his every breath. 

If he dies the unusual bond between him and Louis, made for reasons Liam perversely wants to know the circumstances of, will break. Louis’ mark will fade to nothing. Liam wonders if the hatred he’s holding is aimed towards Zayn for making it, or himself for wanting to keep it. 

“I don’t know.” Louis shrugs weakly, the honesty in his small voice enough to split Harry’s grief open. 

The first sob out of his lips is enough to wipe all thoughts and reason away. Liam’s arms circle Harry’s shoulders in time for his second heaving cry, and every one thereafter, to be pressed into his shoulder. His palms cover the expanse of Harry’s ribs as though to keep them from shaking apart. It wasn’t a choice, it’s just where he was needed. 

It’s exactly where Liam wants to be. 

In the corner of the room, Louis’ hand covers his mark. 

Liam closes his car door with a secure click. On the other side of the back bench Harry’s door closes with a slam.

“Did he think I wouldn’t find out when Zayn was fucking dead?” Harry pushes his hair back with such force it must hurt. “Fuck the money, fuck!” He kicks violently at the seat in front of him. “It’s all they talk about. Nothing’s worth not being there for—”

“Don’t.” 

Liam catches Harry’s arm by the wrist before he can punch the chair. His thumb is tucked, the angle wrong. They’d have had to return to the hospital with the strength Harry's put behind it. Every tear that fell in the hospital room has turned to fuel for the fire on his breath. 

“You agree?” Harry’s fierce eyes accuse him, blaming him for his silence. 

Liam feels like a fish hooked and strung up without mercy given the speed in which Harry’s raw anger has been directed his way. How did this happen so quickly?

Liam talks slow, reasonably. “I think—” 

“Are fucking serious? I’m not an ignorant child, I deserve to know the man who saved my life is losing his.” Harry shakes out of his hold with violent force. 

“Yes, but—” _But it’s nearly destroyed you._ Liam cuts himself off, not wanting to sound anymore condescending than he’s already been. 

Harry’s shaking. Hasn’t stopped since he walked into the hospital. To think of him like this on a bus, on a stage, for weeks on end while they waited for word on Zayn’s condition. It would have been torture. 

It’s a pointless restraint on Liam’s behalf, his failure to finish his response taken as an answer in itself. Harry’s eyes darken and for a flash second they remind Liam so viscerally of Louis’ that Liam recognises the shade for what it is; the hurt of a man betrayed. 

“Switch out with Josh at the hotel. I don’t want to be around you.” 

Liam doesn’t stifle the flinch well enough for Harry to miss, he can see it in the way Harry’s mouth tightens, but the pop star turns to the window without another word. 

Pop star. Security guard. The vastness of an ocean has opened between them. 

His thumb clicks the mic. “Angel in transit.” 

Liam’s shirt is still damp and it doesn’t feel like the trophy he’d imagined it being when he’d seen it on Niall. This wasn’t trust earned vulnerability, he’d simply been the closest thing to grab. The time away will do them both good, allow them to reset and remember their places on the board. 

Liam needs the reminder. 

Liam spends the rest of his shift in the hotel gym pounding a bag until his arms are numb from impact. He moves to the treadmill and keeps the pace at a sprint like he’s got something to run from. He can barely breathe long enough to sip water from his bottle. It sloshes over the rim and onto the floor with a splat and he shakes his muscles loose and punches the start button, pushing harder. 

He’s been having dreams. 

Harry’s smiling, laughing, walking ahead of him on a city street as he looks over his shoulder with mirth on his lips. It’s quick. A faceless man with a knife and Harry’s choked gasp. 

Sometimes it’s Liam on the ground, feeling his limbs grow cold as the blood seeps out of him, a chill he can’t shake even when he wakes. 

Sometimes it’s Harry. 

Those nights are the ones that torment him. 

He pushes too far. By the time he cuts the machine his legs are unsteady and he can’t catch his breath. When he closes his eyes all he can hear is the death rattle of Zayn’s lungs, but it’s not dark features laying on the bed. It’s a curly haired angel in the aftermath of a fall, and Liam stands helpless at his bedside with no way to ease the pain. 

He upends the rest of his bottle overhead. The glacial water does nothing to wipe the image from his mind. 

Liam crosses through the hotel lobby with a thin jumper over his damp body, saving his shower for the private room secured in his room on the ninth floor. He’s halfway to the lift when it opens. 

Hands jammed in pockets and cap pulled low over his face, the man that ducks out is undeniably Louis. Liam recognizes him by stature alone. The other man doesn’t glance his way as he books it through the lobby and spins out the door. 

Liam enters the lift. Presses the button. Enters the hall. 

His footsteps are light on the carpet as he comes to a stop directly in front of suite nine-seventeen. No sound comes from within. No dust stirs in the air. It’s impossible to know. 

Liam doesn’t meet eyes when he nods to Devine and continues to his own room. Even as he closes his door with a soft click he fights the urge to turn around and ask. 

There are bags under Harry’s eyes when he arrives at the bus. Liam taps Devine off, takes his place behind Harry on the steps. He tries to read the angle of Harry’s shoulders, the rhythm of his walk, the individual placement of every strand of hair on his head. 

He can’t tell. Liam stands at the threshold of the bus and watches, and he can’t tell if Harry slept with Louis or not. 

The crew are buzzing louder the closer they get to the end. A week out and it’s deafening. Liam can’t walk a minute through a venue without hearing about it. 

Rubbish litters the deserted arena seats and lines the sides of the stage as the crew wrap up chords and load gear trunks with blind expertise. A well-oiled machine filled with more skill than the shaggy hair and ripped jeans exude. 

Harry sniffles. 

He’s wrapped in an oversized jumper and joggers, socks pulled over the ankles and hands deep in his pockets like he’s freezing. It’s not Liam’s place to make him warm, so he doesn’t offer to. 

In a week Harry will be home and Liam woke this morning with the startling clarity that he hasn’t lined up another job. They aren’t standing here together. This is where Harry would like to stand, and so Liam does as well, to the left and slightly behind. In his place. 

Harry moves and Liam follows. Harry’s rubbing at his nose with increasing frequency, a rigidity to his movements that grows more pronounced with every step through twisting corridors until he whirls. Eyes bright with fire. 

Liam has to stop to keep from running him over. 

“Stop it.” Harry barks.

“What?” 

Harry shoves his hood off and tears a hand through his hair. “This- it’s hard. It’s really fucking hard for me, but I’m trying. So stop fucking looking at me like that.” 

Liam’s heart lodges itself in his throat. He’s dealt with the drunk and disorderly, rabid fanatics, delinquent pop-stars. He knows how to handle a physical confrontation. This? He’s got no idea how to handle this. 

The hall over Harry’s shoulder is gracefully empty. At the end is the door they need to exit to be out of the venue still full of wandering staff, past that is the bus that will hide them from the dregs of fans loitering at the gates, and through the narrow aisle and up the stairs is the lounge where they can have this conversation without witnesses. 

Harry doesn’t seem to give a fuck about the collateral though, because there’s such stone his eyes Liam doesn’t dare attempt to move him. 

“I’m allowed to stand next to people without insinuating I’ve slept with them.” 

Beneath the shock of the admission, a tepid pool of relief warms Liam’s toes. 

Liam’s watched Harry be pushed and pulled by the industry. The screaming crowds and shady execs and the pressure to always be _on_ has tried to drag him down, but still he’s remained with a will of his own. If Harry wants to continue acting like this then Liam is shit out of luck to try and change him, even if he seethes with it. He hopes he hides it in a flat tone. “You can do as you wish, you’re an adult.” 

Harry grows louder with exasperation. “I don’t know _what_ I’m doing, I just…” 

Liam could count Harry’s heartbeats in the silence that follows as he struggles to make his tongue work. He softens his stance, leans in closer. 

“You said you were trying. What are you trying to do, Harry?” 

“I’m trying to be better,” Harry says like it’s obvious, “for you.” 

Liam’s gut curdles at the insinuation. He can admit to himself now that he wants Harry, desperately, madly, but he can’t carry him. Harry has to meet him halfway. 

“I’m not Niall. I can’t be responsible for your happiness.” 

Harry’s glare makes Liam tense for an imminent punch. It doesn’t come, but his words are enough to knock the wind from Liam’s chest. 

“I don’t want you to be, I just- I want happiness because of you, and with you, and after you too if…” Harry huffs in frustration. He licks his lips, looks at Liam’s before he meets his eyes, blatantly filled with desire. “I gotta get better, but I’m happy now, I am. Can’t we? I mean, don’t you?” 

Click.

_“Devine for Payne.”_

Liam tugs the wire on his neck and the earpiece springs free, his head empty of reason. All he knows is the nervous tremble of Harry’s hand as it reaches to pull him in, the stutter in Harry’s breath as their bodies align in charged contact, the unwavering shine in Harry’s eye as time suspends itself. 

Liam’s eyes slip closed. 

Harry’s back is warm beneath the palm Liam’s slipped under the jumper to hold him close. Fingers grip Liam’s shoulder in a tight squeeze. Gently Liam angles his head, noses past the soft curls to seek out the tender patch of skin at the omega’s hairline, and breathes. 

The rush of pure scent sends his head spinning. Deliberately slow he trails his nose down the line of Harry’s jaw, savouring every shuttered breath until his mouth hovers. Waits. 

Harry’s lips are hesitant. The first sweet press is barely there, the second still innocently faint.

Liam’s witnessed Harry attached at the lips with a thousand men and women throughout the country. Has seen the way he leads them in with vigorous force. But this isn’t Harry reeling in a catch meant to be released. 

This hook will be permanent. There’s a quiver in Harry’s touch, seeking direction. 

Liam feels the thrum of Harry’s pulse as he cradles his jaw. With guiding force, Liam holds Harry exactly where he needs to be. Every emotion Liam’s held between the first time he saw Harry and this moment are laid naked, poured into the way he seeks Harry’s parted lips and finds a place for them to meet, a fluid give and take that echoes with a roll through their bodies. 

“No half ways,” Liam says when they finally take a moment to breathe. Harry nods against him, blown eyes sincerely serious despite the tantalising position their bodies have found. If Liam’s hands weren’t solidly cupping Harry’s hips, they’d be trembling. Liam’s gut feels like it’s dropping through the floor. “You have to mean it, Harry. Because I’m fucking stupid around you, and I can’t handle anything less than all in.” 

The doors at the end of the hall slams open for a couple of careless venue staff to enter, in the midst of an obnoxiously loud conversation that keeps them from noticing the way Liam and Harry shift apart, not quick enough to be subtle when there’s clinginess from both of them. 

Harry licks his lips thoughtlessly, his chest heaving in time with Liam’s. His fingers have found Liam’s and they curl around them to stop their shaking. It feels nothing like horrifying cinch Liam’s been anticipating and everything like the pleasant comfort of a hug. The ache in Liam’s heart isn’t unpleasant. If anything, he wants to lean further into it. 

“I want that,” Harry replies softly. The delicate little smile blooming on his lips is a sight Liam hopes he never forgets. He never wants to forget this exact moment he realises with a shuttered breath, and he clings to it while it still plays out. Harry’s fingers squeeze Liam’s tightly. “I want everything, you can have all of me.” 

Liam can’t help the glance at Harry’s neck. Harry flushes, but he doesn’t tilt his head to shy away. The cacophony that follows the band members echoes from the other side of the double doors, their presence imminent any second. Liam can’t resist. He ducks close for one last gratifying kiss and enjoys the way Harry reacts pleasantly with his whole body, a pleased little sound slipping from him. 

Every ounce of willpower Liam has is needed to make him part. He takes a single step back just in time for the rowdy band members to burst through the door and call out greetings as they file past into the green room. Harry lingers momentarily to share that beautiful smile a little longer before spinning to follow them into the room. 

Liam’s face is hot, stretched in a way it rarely ever is with a broad smile he can’t contain. He knocks his head back against the wall and listens. The boys greet Harry quickly with good cheer, none the wiser to what they came so close to interrupting. The sound of Harry’s laughter mixed with theirs makes it easier to breathe. 

Liam closes his eyes. He’s savouring the split-second slide of silk he’d felt beneath the hood of Harry’s jumper and the matching quick flash of colour he’d caught wrapped around Harry’s neck. He hadn’t lied. This is all it takes for his brain to quite literally turn to mush. The big stupid grin on his face surely says as much. Luckily, for the time being, there’s no one Liam has to hide it from. 

Harry’s buoyant, smiles and soft looks throughout the next day. The clench in Liam’s stomach he used to pull back from, he let’s bloom past the initial tight rush and into a fluttery swoop of warmth. Harry’s fingers constantly find him. They dance along his shoulder as he passes on the bus, reach back for his hand through the winding venue corridors, smooth over his ribs when he leans in for a hot mouthed kiss before he steps on stage. 

With one week left they're not hiding it as much as they should, but Liam still twists to tuck them into corners and rounds his shoulders to block onlookers from seeing the sweet way Harry’s lips meet his.

A rush comes through him every time he feels Harry’s small touches, but it’s incomparable to the flood that rages on the rare occasions Liam’s the one to reach out. The flourish in which Harry reacts. He curves himself around Liam’s arm over his shoulder as they rest at the table during a quiet breakfast. Presses into the hand Liam has on his waist to steer his sleepy form through the maze of halls after the post-show shower has made him warm and drowsy. The surprise starts to wear off every time Harry not only accepts Liam’s touch but sinks into it. Liam’s hands become less fearful, less questioning, and increasingly addicted to the reaction they pull. 

He can’t enjoy it for long.

Not when he’s been witness to the flux and flow of Harry’s moods before. He knows Harry relies on sex the way an addict relies on a high, that he turns to it as a means of escape from all the things he doesn’t want to feel. The thought of touching Harry when he’s like that, when he’s pliant like a doll, it sickens Liam to his stomach. He wants Harry bright eyed and present, active and eager for him not as an escape but because he wants _Liam_. He doesn’t doubt they’ll get to share that some day, it’s just not something easily worked into in the narrow stolen moments they have together in the communal spaces of the bus and dressing rooms. 

“I want to wait,” Liam says when Harry’s hard in his jeans and tugging on Liam’s waistband begins the closed door of the dressing room. 

Harry’s breathing heavy against Liam’s face and vibrates with the energy of the show. It takes more than one blink to bring a spark of clarity to his eyes. Harry’s tongue brushes Liam’s swollen lips when he licks his own.

“Wait?”

Liam’s hands clench around Harry’s hips to still their rocking. 

“Wait.” 

So they’ve waited. Because despite all the little moments they’ve shared, there remains a cinch in Liam’s gut the moment he thinks about going further. Like the tug of a noose as he looks over the edge of a cliff side. 

His eyes meet Niall’s more and more often with every day that passes, starting to understand the ways he’s misjudged the strength of the man. 

“It’s not easy loving a wild animal” Niall murmurs to Liam as they watch Harry singing the notes of his heartstrings for sound check. Harry's wearing his new shirt today. "Good thing I know you've got a real heart inside that tin man suit of yours." 

He nudges Liam lightly before he walks away, fiddling with a familiar tune on his six string as he goes. 

Harry is soaring, and it takes six days for him to get too close to the sun. Six days from the first time their lips touched for the crease between Harry’s eyes to grow deep, the shift of his movements jarring, the flick of his focus quick and fleeting.

Like a man afloat in the dark damning sea, it takes every inch of strength Liam has to keep his head above water, his attempts futile as he watches the tidal wave swell before him, crash imminent.

The second the lights go off on stage for the final time this tour, Harry is on him. 

_“Post show sweep commenced.”_

_“No one uses the word commenced.”_

_“We make it thirteen weeks in and you want to fight this now?”_

Liam ignores the clicks in his right ear of his team members grown lax with the end of tour in sight. He’s too busy detangling himself until his iron grip around Harry’s fingers is the only contact. He marches towards the dressing room, locks the door, and shoves the curtain of a private shower to the side with a rattle on the rail. Harry goes easily into the stall, even easier when Liam has a weak moment and meets his lips forcefully, pressing Harry into the tiles until he finds the strength to tear away. 

Harry keeps tight hold on Liam’s shirt. “Liam, please—”

“Shower first.” 

It’s a false lead to buy himself time, but Harry takes the lie Liam sells with it and weakens his hold enough for Liam to step back and leave before he hears the weight of Harry’s clothes hit the floor. 

Their steps verge on running towards the bus. 

The bang of the door cuts off the cries of a million fans as they lean on the groaning chain link fence to be an inch closer to Harry. The bus is eerily vacant, the rest of the band celebrating the end of tour in proper musician style in the green room. There’s at least an hour before anyone else steps foot on the bus. 

Lips beg access to Liam’s mouth, hands yank at the tucked shirt and firm belt in frantic search for bare skin. Liam gives just enough to make Harry pliant, herding him towards the back and up the stairs with firm hands. The back lounge is a nest that welcomes them in a soft embrace. 

Liam takes Harry’s thighs in hand for a momentary lift at the foot of the mattress, setting Harry down and trying to pull away. Harry follows. 

“Harry, enough.” It doesn’t work, not that Liam could have expected it to with the weakness of his will. 

“No, no, no,” Harry chants like a prayer, writhing against Liam as the seams of their clothes tear beneath his clenched fists and he grinds into Liam’s hips, a desperate attempt to pull their movements into something vulgar.

Liam gets Harrys hands down, pressed into his chest so Liam can shift from between Harry’s legs to get behind him in a forceful spoon. The harder Harry shifts against him, the harder Liam holds, eliminating any space between them so there’s nowhere for Harry to move. 

“Enough.” This time the growl is forceful and Harry’s strength lets out, his struggle feeble. Liam’s thumb strokes over the tender skin of Harry’s arm as he asks into Harry’s damp hair, “What are you running from?” 

“I’m not- Liam, please.” Harry tries with one more strain of muscle to find friction, his voice pitchy with the extent of his fervor and desperation, his gasps wet and heaving. He’s been crying since they entered the bus. “Please just fuck me.” 

Liam closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath through the pain of his heart cracking. Harry’s not lashing out anymore, Liam’s arms no longer a cage but an embrace to hold him together as he shakes with sporadic sobs. Liam wants to see his face, but he can’t let go long enough to try.

“I see you,” he whispers in Harry’s shoulder like an admission. “I see when you shine, I see when you lie, I see when you run from the light.” 

Harry’s fingers twist around Liam’s arms and press, sinking in so deep there’ll be bruises, like he’s holding to the edge of a cliffside. 

“Don’t.” Despite the deepness of his tone, Harry’s voice betrays him with a waver. 

“Why not?” Liam murmurs in his neck. 

Harry sniffles, a wet sound under his shuddering breath and the pound of their hearts. 

They lay like that long enough for one of Liam’s arms to lose circulation and an ache in his neck to start up, but he doesn’t move. Harry’s breathing evens out, but it doesn’t slow with sleep. 

Liam eases both their limbs into place until his hold is a cradle. He waits. Harry eases into it beautifully, his back bowing to fit the curve of Liam’s chest, his hands gently curled around the arm Liam keeps wrapped around him, palm flat against the thin skin over the centre of Harry’s ribs. 

“I have a house in London,” Harry starts, his throat scratchy, parched. “It’s supposed to be home but I’ve never slept there. I know cafes in New York and restaurants in Dallas, but I have no idea where to buy milk. I don’t even know my address, I had to google it.” 

“It’s huge, and I should love it, but I can’t stop thinking…” he curls around the hand Liam has above his heart, “it’s going to be so empty.”

Tour ends tomorrow. Everyone will roll over from wherever they slept the night before and pack their bags for a one-way flight. Liam doesn’t have a flight booked. He’d never thought to, without another job lined up he hadn’t had a place to think of going, certainly doesn’t have one to return to.

Maybe. 

Liam fingers a soft curl before brushing it aside. The back of Harry’s neck is flush and heated, a little damp from the exertion of the night. Harry’s pure scent is heady and Liam takes his time savouring, offering a small lick before he pulls away. A few shifts and Harry turns over to face him with red-rimmed eyes and splotchy cheeks and matted hair that Liam brushes back from his forehead. 

Beautiful. 

His hand curves over Harry’s ear and threads through his hair, just holding, waiting. Harry’s eyes are hopeful, brimming with yearning so very different from the heated glaze they held earlier. He stops himself from leaning in the first few times, a wary eye on Liam’s face like he’s expecting to be pulled away. Liam strokes the soft spot behind Harry’s ear and waits. 

Every ounce of caution melts from Harry the second his face reaches the crook of Liam’s neck. The tension leaves him like a marble statue turned to a river of gold, molten and malleable as he breathes in deeply. 

Maybe together they could find home.

**Author's Note:**

> ♡ Find the sharable/likeable post on my [tumblr](https://zanniscaramouche.tumblr.com/post/640081423309684736/singing-harmonies-in-neverlands-embrace-lights)♡
> 
> xx Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you thought in a comment xx


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